Coast to Coast

One Day at Bus Stop...

2010-09-01T11:09:00.001-07:00

He looked at his watch: 12:30. "Shit", he murmurred. Again he was late, Like the last fifteen days.

"What the hell" he thought, "I do not have any work anyway!" Thankfully iGoogle was not blocked at his office and he had installed a pretty cool braingames addon to his iGoogle homepage. He now could play battleship with the computer or someone as idle as him allday. But still, he was anxious to get on to the bus, because in his bachelor life, office also equated to "Lunch" or "Food".

Technology is a bliss! he thought.And he looked above to thank the person above. Only to face the searing sun directly above his head. the temparature in these parts of the world never goes down. And the money one earns never goes up. He was sweating like a pig. His shirt had already given up the deodorant and braced the smell of sweat. His hair was all wet. and He stood in the busstand (or so they claimed though it was practically just roadside) for a bus to go to office.

Today was friday. And the day to party, to hang out with girls at pubs after office. Well these things meant nothing when you are cornered to a city like this. He despised the city, its people, its life, its weather and its food. Not to mention its language. Everything about this city was directly from medieval age. He looked around and looked with pity on the few gents and ladies standing beside him for the bus.

One guy wearing a white shirt and a white dhoti which was folded in half and knotted near his waist. It looked like a miniskirt. He could draw analogy from the scottish national dress - the kilt. However the scotsmen looked nothing like these hideous creatures. There was a girl wih a assortment of flowers on her hair. She smelled pathetic. Moreover she had applied some face powder quite heavily on her face, making it look fairer from the other parts of her body. "These people are darker than the african americans!", he thought. At the same time he felt proud of his complexion and thanked the searing sun above for having his birth elsewhere, somewhere where still existed a season called winter and butter chicken was loved more than pepper chicken.

He's been thinking about leaving this place eversince he came here. He wanted to go back to his city, but alas there are no jobs here. He wanted to go to some other city which were cooler or what his friends usually call "happening". But his bloody project manager wouldn't let him go anywhere. He was stuck here. Parmanently.

He tried a number of stuff to get out of this shit hole. He tried to get into MBA. But all the good colleges wanted smarter people than he was. He tried to switch job, but looked like, someone in america screwed it up bigtime so there were no job for a developper with a 2 year experience.

When he went back to his city after spending one year here, he was astonished to see the city change. It had grown a lot more savvy. There were more coffee shops and pubs, more girls with fewer cloths, more tall flats everywhere. The small town was quite desperate to shed off its "small town" tag, and was galloping towards metropolis-dom. He loved it.

But that was almost one year back and was for only 7 days.
That was when a flight ticket could be bought for 1 rs if you plan appropriately. "Chance illa" now! He's been saving money to go home, to see his girlfriend - Shalini.

Time flies by and doesn't even gives a notice. After joining his job, he became so busy for the first one and half years he didn't notice where he was going. Now was the time to retrospect. He had worked hard in this city. This city was about working hard. Everyone from the porter in station to the tea kadai owner everyone is working hard here. His next door neighbour were a few 20 years odd youngmen. They studied engineering in the city, as was the norm with any medium intellect fellow over here in this region. Those guys start at 7, in unison, at a high pitch voice, to study and continue at that pace, without stopping till 12.

"OMG", he laughed in his mind, he had never studied like that in his whole life. Probably if he did, he would have landed a better job than this. But it didn't matter. He was where he was. And where he was, everything around him, gave rise to a sarcastic smile in his face.

"How long more", he muttered. One bald guy in gentlemanly suffary suit was standing beside him, almost shouting in his cellphone at someone in english. Understandably he was looking for an address and that fellow at the other side of the call, wasn't much helpful. The guy snapped his call, looked at him, and spoke sheepishly,"Execuse me, do you know this place well". For two years he had been doing just that, knowing this place. because everywhere he went, every road he put his footprint on, made him banter, made him sarcastic about the locality, the locals. The man, who was a bit elderly, around in his early fifties, asked him about an address, he didn't know where it was. But thankfully he was talking in hindi. What a bliss. None here speaks that. The man went away. He secretly was pleased at the tamilians bracing of hindi. It was a victory of somesort. The north will win someday, and these "darker-than-the-african-americans" will give way.

The bus was coming. Heavily crowded, it looked almost like a Mumbai local train. He started jostling for getting on. Finally he could place a foot on the last step and tried to hold one of the rods across the windows. His hand slipped.

He was terrified, and the bus had just picked up speed.

suddenly a darker than dark hand came out of the crowd and caught his company ID tag. The bus pushed ahead.

[Disclaimer: This is not my point of view but that of the protagonist.]

Drinking

2010-05-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

I am a born drunkard. Yet I am losing the charm of drinking day by day.

I mean I can't drink by myself. With most of my intoxicated friends away, there is no company to drink with. In between I had developed a few online friendships with like minded people, with whom I used to drink while chatting on virtual forums. (i know that sounds like a loser but that is the best i could manage)

Now all those guys are either married or dead.

I think I need a few rounds of Vodka to kick myself up. But you don't get vodka in Chennai. All you can manage is a nice overpriced bottle of Black Dog. But office doesn't allow me to reach the liquor shop (in local words: TASMAC) before 10.

Oh my life is so fucked up! :-(

Censorship

2010-05-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Censorship of media has always been a topic of major debate. While many countries have adopted no censorship policy and have reduced control of government

over media, there are many countries which still today continue to uphold strict control over contents of media. Its tough to take a stand on either side as

there are strong arguments and counter arguments. However I feel that censorship should be on the part of the people or consumers rather than at the part of

producers or the government who may try to control production.

A censored media means, you get to see what you are being shown. The choice for the people reduces drastically. Moreover such a control by government over a

media may harm the quality of content that will be available. let's take an example of china, where the media is fully controlled by Chinese government. This

means the Chinese people will be limited to the view point of chinese government only and would not be able to see/listen to any program that criticises the

government or provides a counter argument to a government policy. This is harmful for the society.

A censorship of content also demeans the congizance of the viewers. It has to be understood that a bad program or an offensive program will be summarily

rejected by the viewer sooner or later. Although this has implication on the traditions and cultures of the soceity but censorship should not be the answer

to that. Many countries like india censor TV programs to avoid, nudity, religiously offensive programs. This trend is evident in middle eastern islamic

countries as well. This has to do with the culture of the region. Nudity, blasphemy etc contents which generally offends viewers are often termed as normal

in europe while it is not so in Asia. Also we need to ask ourselves, have the society matured enough to depend upon the cognizance of the viewers and let

them choose what to see and what not to? This may be a very difficult choice. A religiously abusive tv program has the potential to cause huge social unrest

and disharmony among large multicultural countries.

Often a program is supposedly an offensive one whenever it ridicules a section of the community, or shows a counter philosophy or shows the dark side of a

particular faction. This may be done as a constructive criticism as well, which is good for the community. This may have been done as a brilliant work of

satire. But not everyone has the apetite for this, and the government may choose to censor such a program which otherwise would have become a brilliant piece

of work. Thus the government devoids the soceity in such cases.

Censorship in my view causes two major issues. One is to completely devoid the user from a counter view point which the government may block if it doesn't

agree to it, thus cropping the viewers spectrum. Secondly it undermines the viewers intelligence in judging between a good and a bad program. Government

simply has no role to play in it and should stay away from censoring anything. A viewer has a right to watch what he likes to watch and listen to what he

likes to listen to.

What Do You Do at Office?

2010-04-29T06:35:00.001-07:00

Ten things you do at Office:

1. Read google news.
2. Read some more google news.
3. Read Cricinfo.
4. Look up for useful stuff in Wikipedia like: Cannibals of India, Megapodes of Andaman, Financial turmoil of the mid 1920s etc.
5. Pick up the headphone (connected to your phone and not IPOD) put it on your head like you are doing some very useful talk.
6. Don't forget to put the phone on mute. Do speak up a few times in between of course while on mute.
7. Go for 3 coffee breaks.
8. Go for 3+3 Cig breaks.
9. One lunch and two breakfast and two tiffin breaks.
10. If someone asks you something about the area of your expertise, respond: "Yah, I will look into it and get back"
11. Don't ever get back. That will be asking for trouble.
12. Check the date thrice in a day (especially in the last week of a month).
13. Read and re-read the salary check 5 times to ensure your company is not looting you (on the first week).

Many more to come...offices are after all supposed to be hectic!

Fate, Chicken & a Sunday Evening!

2010-03-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

[Long post warning....]

How bad a day can be? Or rather how bad your two hours can be? I bet you can’t beat me, and forget beating you can’t even match me in bad luck.

Here’s how it unfolded. I sold my cupboard to one colleague. She requested me to get a truck or tempo and send it over to her place. I couldn’t find any reason to disagree.

So today was the day when I was supposed to send it out. Once the sun died out, I went to catch a tempo from the nearest market. There are always a host of them standing there waiting for a customer. So it is normally a few minutes job really. Just the bargaining part was something I was worried about.

Suddenly I found that there are numerous trucks there, but none of them have got any driver in it. It was a curious scene. There were like 5-10 tempos standing in the stand none of them had a driver. I asked a nariel pani wala about the whereabouts of the drivers. He gave me a strange look and said 15 rs. So I understood, that he needs me to buy a nariel pani in exchange of the valuable information. I bought one, even though heavy from a late lunch in the afternoon, still I took a huge Chennai DAAB (raw nariel or green coconut in Bengali).

Then I asked, “anda truck driver inge irike?”

he said, “teri la”!!

I astonished and indignant: “enna teri la? Nee soldra daab tanni kurunga to truck driver irike soldra”

Nariel pani wala (bewildered): “enna something something…illa terila…something something…” points to his head makes a gesture of loose screw!!

I in plain and crude Bengali: “sala boka****** ityadi ityadi”….

Angry but helpless, that’s how I have felt a numerous time in Chennai, today was such a day.

After waiting in the stand for an odd 40 minutes and when a single
Truck driver failed to appear I gave up. I thought I better enquire in the near by petrol pump where they would know someone at least.

Went to the petrol pump and asked for trucks, they showed the next car service, I went there and asked for a contact and they showed me a brochure that they provide only privet car like indica, ambassador etc!!!

I decided to give up and was coming back towards the truck stand, suddenly found a truck driver appear and get into his truck. I started running towards him, frantically throwing my hands above my head to stop him. He just whizzed past me, without bearing a thought or any compassion towards me. Big city people, how ruthless they are!!

I after this incident waited for ten more minutes to find out if any conspiring truck driver my appear here or there and the canny policeman I am, I might be able to get hold of him. But nothing dramatic happened after this, and I gave up finally.

The second mission on the go was to buy chicken. Normally I get chicken from spencers daily and never bother about the local chicken shops. Yes, I know I am not filthy rich but I don’t usually mind the extra 15 bucks the spencers guy charges for the clean environment etc.

So here I was busily speaking to a friend whom I was asking to come over for dinner (the chicken was by the way the main course). I busily crossed the local chicken shops but never noticed a deep conspiracy taking shape around me.

I walked and went to the spencers, and to much of my dismay, there was no chicken. The guy was apologetic and told that today the demand was exceptionally high and hence he was helpless.

I kind of didn’t mind. I was still unaware of what was to come. I traced my way back to the local chicken shops.

And to my utter dismay, found all the shops were closed.

I thought for a little while on how to approach this problem. Then I thought that I still had two course of action to be taken. Two backup plans really.

Backup 1 – there was still a shop left in one of the inner lanes nearby. I had bought chicken from there on a Sunday before, so was pretty damn sure it would be open.

Backup 2 – I could buy fish as the fish shop was open. There was a certain unhygeinix selling fish to my utmost liking.

Backup 3 – there was this Godrej real cut chicken which you can buy in many of the local supermarkets. That is the last option, though I don’t really like that chicken, but I thought once in a while it’s not too bad.

So I took backup 1 and walked for another 7-8 minutes to the shop in one of the inner lanes only to find the shop open but no chicken left!

I took backup 2, and rushed to the fish shop, to find out none of the fish they are selling we normally eat. I could have still bought those, but got a strict red signal from home.

At this point of time I was a bit unnerved. That famous suggestion by Paul Coelho, that if you really want something, then the entire kayanaat (whatever that means…. may mean heavenly bodies) tries to get you that seemed to be totally nonsense at this point of time.

Rather if someone has already suggested the opposite, he seemed to be quite right.

But I was not to give up so easily. I walked back to spencers to see if I can get to backup 3. And godrej chicken’s freezer was there in the super market, but no chicken again.

I went to the next supermarket and no chicken again.

I thought damn with these flashy supermarkets. There is one just near my house; I would rather check that one. Being situated at a relatively quieter place, chances of getting chicken there was more.

I took a bus, came back. Ran and crossed the shop. Glared at the man suspiciously who suddenly tried to dodge me to enter the shop before me and kept my hand on the freeze. There it was. One piece. The last of the Mohican chickens!

Frozen yet fresh.

Meaty and magnetic.

I bought that. Finally, I was happy. I had beaten them all. I had beaten the kayanaat and got the food of my choice. Take that bugger, told my fist which I pumped in the babynagar 1st main road walking back alone.

Well, it didn’t last long though. Returned home and my wife found out that chicken pack had got expired 3 days back.

It was a sinking feeling when I heard that news. The same sinking feeling that Gibbs might have got after getting beaten by a legbreak from Warney (according to cricinfo he did get a sinking feeling!! And I realized what kind of feeling that is at this very moment).

My wife suggested fro the guests lets make something with egg. Not ideal to treat your guests, but then we had no option at all. We walked back (this time I took her along to see if this has any effect on my ill starred luck) to the shop. Returned the chicken bought eggs and came home.

Then I sat back to watch IPL, and as soon as I switched the TV on, the master got out. I was almost kicking myself when the Bhajji blizzard gave the mumbaikars quite a formidable total to look at. I am never a Bhajji fan but it somewhat made up for the lost entertainment that I was expecting from the master.

And suddenly my wife came from the kitchen and notified, the gas is over so no cooking tonight!! Need I say more?

around me..

2010-03-25T12:45:00.001-07:00

This post will be to the point like a design document. This will also be quite brazen and blunt. So here we go:

1. This post is all about life around me from the last few months...to be specific last 10 months.

2. Deers in chennai seem to be a common affair. How cool is that? The other day while walking home at around 10:30 in the night, i suddenly saw two glowing eyes. First look and I thought this was some mischievous cow grazing around even after its happy hours were over. Then the second look revealed it was not a cow when it started running. what a beauty it was. A full grown deer with full set of horns - a chital(spotted deer) as we call it in bengali. I last saw one in Jaldapara National Park. Alas i didn't have my camera with me that day!! today I spotted three more near my house, and boy i was delighted!

3. Pallikaranai is the place where i go to work. This is a reserved forest area. can you imagine? A marshland which is within the city limits and just next to the biggest dumping ground of chennai is a reserve forest! (No, I do not work in the reserve forest, my office is just beside it). Come winter and ahoy, a host of migratory birds are roaming around the marshland! large herons, cranes, pelicans and what not!! I have been planning to get them on my camera ever since, but again, i am too lazy!

4. Offices are normally a sick place. Its even more so, when everything is process driven and those processes mean actually having to pass through a hell lot of red tape. My project is one such place. And we create more red tape as a part of my job! :|

5. My parents are here, so I am having a fun time. I ate bhangon fish yesterday, which I never knew is available in chennai, and oh boy, what a delicacy it was! Thanks Mom.

6. My parents are here, so I am having a dry time as well. :|

7. IPL has been irritating. mainly because of the poor form of my hometeam KKR (whoever thought of that name!!) and their ugly jersey. Although its still feels good to see Sachin blasting away in IPL at this age. Dunno why he's not playing the WT20. :(

8. Like everyone else in the planet, i am annoyed at maxmobile timeouts, DLF maximums, city moment of successes. I think Lalit Modi should be hanged for doing this to cricket commentry!

9. Its quite disgusting to see how the indian bowlers use the MC BC wordss with so much idiosyncrasies. Even if you can't hear 'em, you can clearly read their lips! Guys, you have just got the wicket of Rahul Dravid, no need to swear so much!! its just a domestic tourney!! Someone should spank thse young bunch of buggers, that swearing is not agression!! and your 5 yr old brother is also watching ur antiques.

10. Cricbuzz cricket forums have been a revelation during IPL matches. Never knew there is so much hatred for a southie hidden in a mumbaikar! marathi manoos is finally waking up!Sincerely hope, this is only a small faction of cricket fanatics and not the general trend!

11. MF Hussain has left the country to avoid law suits against him. Govt right after he left started clamouring that they were all for him to stay. Stop this nonsense. If you haven't acted earlier, no need to make a seen later, as it shows your moral poverty.

12. TMC is on the verge of doing a clean sweep at Bengal. I wonder, will it heal all the diseases that the state have acquired under the rule of 30 years by the left? Will TMC not be leftier than left option for Bengal? I just hope its not. and Aal izz well when that finally happens.

13. Kishenjee seems to be the next Prabhakaran in the making. Wonder why police can't find him even though the journos always can contact him to get a quote or two. Does this comprehensively prove our police is stupid? or there was never any need of a proof!! :P

That's it from me as of now.

Oh, p.s: I have watched Up in the Air, was OK. Waiting to see Hurt Locker. None of the other Oscar nominees had any interesting theme/story line, hence oscar was quite a let down actually.

Outsourcing and All That...

2009-05-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

outsourcing mainly means cheap labor. When you can't keep enough gus in your office, because your business stinks, you can't rent enough office space or buy enough number of laptops for your employees or even giving them salary is beyond your reach you outsource the jobs.

These jobs come to India (or the likes of it) where man power is limitless and renewable( as every second we generate a new source of energy - Human energy). And htere are millions of millions of buggars who will do your job (be it cleaning your dirty linen) almost for free.

So basically money is what keeps Outsourcing alive. As long as you do it cheap you are there. Once u ask for a hike in the contract, oh sir, you see, you do not fit strategically into our company's vision. hence Bubbye. - is hwat most client companies would say to the suppliers. They know there is no dearth of another outsourcer.

Being an insider I have thought about this situation a lot. And I have no doubt that outsourcing works only because of this cheap labor stuff.

We suck at understanding the job or the operations or the business of our clients. We suck at understanding why they do things or how they do things. We more importantly are never bothered about what should ideally be our role in helping hte customer achieving its goal. We do what we are told to do by the customer. And wash our hands with that.

But hten haven't we brought a lot of good things to the european large companies along with us? I happen to be working for a european giant ( a mammoth i would say) company. My job is to provide consultancy and functional designing. before we the wretched contractors came in, it was handled by the company's own ppl.

with us around, the company can now achieve more htan what it could ever do before. know why?

Because, now you can put in a requirement only 3 days before release and expect to bully the contractors to get it done. Now you can never respond to an email clarificaiton which was sought during design or development and later on calmly point your finger to someone and say it was always an implicit requirement. You can now actually look at an individual and expect him to cancel his vacation and come to work on all days.

has europe ever seen a more committed workforce than these outsourced workers? Has europe ever seen a more easily bullied software giants? Has europe ever seen ppl who can effortlessly put in 14 hours a day and get back home and tell his wife how he solved one issue and is so much proud of it? Has europe ever seen a guy to archive an email from a client with a "Thank You" which probably the guy didn't even have to write rather was a part of his standard signature!!

Outsourcing is reducing the whole world to a global village. I wonder whether it will do good for anyone. At one side there are these large corporate houses who are happy to give away jobs that could have been easily done by locals to a far away country. Increasing profit of hte company along with joblessness, insecurity and reduction of spending power in its own country where it sells its products! At the other end it sends money to a country where a few of the blokes earns a tiny share of the large pie (which eventually goes to the company balancesheets or fat paycheques for the executives) and are happy to buy a levis every other month or a pulsar to ride with his girlfriend to a local pub selling very ordinary drought Kingfisher.

The definition of life goes a sea change in different places. I have seen europeans who work only stipulated hours and have taken pride in myself that I can work for 72 hours at a stretch. But then I do take the awe that how these ppl can leave the so called "urgent" or "very important" work behind and go for a fishing trip or a camping session in norhtern highlands! I cant help but wonder, are we wrong or they are?

How this sort of different working culture affecting the world working sceanrios? The europeans(or the americans or those who employ us...no regional bias here...jsut to point out someone) now want more out of hte money they are putting in. With recession knocking at the door, they want 5 guys to be replaced by 3 and 3 to be replaced by 1. work remains the same. deliverable output remains the same. but the workhorses reduce. and we to keep our business alilve, to keep our roti rozi coming, agree to every unreasonable timescales, cancel our vacations, run around the country or the globe for the sake of it.our girlfriends wait at home. our mothers forget how we look and our fathers wary of the future of his bloodline. such is life.

P.S: I know this is one of the most incoherent posts I have ever written. But then an incoherent post is better than no post. ;-)

The Pursuit of Happiness

2009-01-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking lately. I have been thinking hard. Not that I seldom practice it and hence I have to blog (read brag) about it, but then there is something unique about this particular thought.

I have thought about this since long time. When I was a child, still this thing kept me worried. And that worrying thing is nothing but a question: “What is the purpose of life?”

When I was a kid, one fine morning, while playing with my friends, I fell, and I was crying. Suddenly I realized, I was crying for myself. As I had a feeling that my “self” was not in the so called happy mode. I wanted to see if I could do away with the crying part, and I could laugh. I tried and I succeeded. Of course for a brief stint though. I hadn’t paid much heed to it. And my parents and the others around me, found me to be very brave and courageous.

That was not the least true. I am a coward and everyone who knows me a well, knows this about me. I am scared of everything around of me. Not necessarily I cry though in every situation. But I do.

I remember I was scared of lying to my mom when I was a kid. So after flunking a number of math problems in class IV exam, I came back home and lied. I knew I had got a couple wrong, and my upbringing told me that was an unforgivable sin. My parents never would beat me, but still, I feared the very worst, and lied. I am afraid of failures. In games, or in exams. That’s why I was pretty much a studious student till my fourth grade. I feared coming second and studied even harder. All these fears were allayed off one day.

When one by one they came true. I was no longer the best player among my friends (not in cricket, not in football not in TT), neither I remained the best student in the class (came second in fourth). All these slowly ragged the fear a bit down. Things I could do so well, when I was afraid of them, were not my forte any longer since I faced those very fears. In a way, I won over them.

Coming back to the topic, crying and laughing became an experiment for me. I have laughed at strange circumstances where none would have thought of, though never actually tried crying when I should be laughing. Probably it was because a moment of laughter is too dear a thing to be wasted in meaningless tears. The thought that these experiments gave rise to, was of profound importance and gave me a belief which made me what I am today.

I started believing a human being is who he wants to be. The circumstances do play their part in shaping you. I am no master at human psychology to deny or to trifle at that. But I believe I am who I wanted to be. And of course you are who you wanted to become. These played a part in going forward in my thought process and ask a few more questions.

I wanted to know if I am who I wanted to become, then in reality, who I am or rather who I wanted to become. I hope I am not perplexing the reader with too many complex sentences. Then I started asking, why I wanted to become what I have become. What was the purpose that led me to it?

While growing up, slowly trifle things took over my mind. Trifle things like, studies, career, job, onsite, dollar, rupees, pound starlings, and girls and many more. I never took care of thinking about these things anymore. The other day, I was talking to my mom over the phone. And we were joking about my aunt’s devoted faith in Shri Ravi Shankar ji’s “Art of Living” gyans. My mom had a confused state of mind whether to pursue what others are so devotedly pursuing. She said, at her age, people should be devoted to God. She should be now, thinking about religious matters and should be set free from all the trifle things of life. She thought, all her life was spent in trifle things anyway. And now as she nears that ninth gate towards eternity, she should remember the One who sent her here on earth to fulfill her duties. I could not help but laugh. And at the same time, my questions which always had bothered my subconscious came back to me at once.

What was the purpose of human beings life? I, at once, realized that it’s not fulfillment of duties that people think they should be doing. Rather, it’s a pursuit of happiness that human beings are here for. That pursuit of happiness makes what you are. And being happy is the goal of life.

Ghajini : A review

2008-12-28T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ghajini
Cast: Amir Khan, Asin, Jiya Khan
Dir: A Murugadoss
Rating: **

I did not plan to watch this movie. I had an uncanny feeling what this is going to be like. I have never been a big fan of south indian movies. As i have always felt they lack the finesse which I am looking from films. And woo hoo, I was right. I saw Taran Aadarsh giving a whopping four and a half rating out of five to this flick. I am sorry Taran. You have lost it this time.

Lets see how this one fared in my own yardstick!

I would not give this one more than a mere 2/5...THe story was an interesting one and the script does not do justice to it. I was told by my tamil friends that original ghajini was a mindless flick (though a hit) and it doesn't make sense to remake it in hindi.. I now totally concur with them.

the weak points of the movie are:

1. the weak dialogues. This movie has got real poor dialogues. especially those by the villain. was a pain.

2. A villain totally notwithstanding this era of movies. He could be a villain of 80s or 90s...not today..so lack of charm or horror. this guy can only shout and not act. he never instills that fear that you need him to do to justify the horrifying memories Aamir bears.

3. Song sequences: Many of the songs fall in to hte movie out of the blue. THere was no sequence for that Lattu song(an item song for the sake of an item song total rubbish), bachchu song (put in to introduce Asin), behka(to show amir falls in love)....and guess what all are dream sequences...apart from lattu.

4. some important scenes not given importance. Like the scene where asin tells amir she loves him. And amir gives a dumbfound look. He clearly was clueless how to react and so must have been the director. i mean a girl tells you she loves you, u just dont look at her back with that deer caught in headlights look. thats rubbish. another scene is jiya khan comes to hospital to tell amir about ghajini. Amir shouts in agony but where is that agony. all i could see is the round eyes, his egg-head, and jumping in adrenalin. there was no emotioon there... there was no fucking drama.

5. Story. well this is the fucking age of internet you moron. you wanna kill a guy, you don't just go looking for him. you search for him, you google him or you atleast look in the directory...you go to his house...anyway even if we decide to take that crap in, the story is loosely bound. That's why there are actually three scenes where that diary of sanjay singhania is read...

6. Amir himself is one of the weakest links in the movie. He has built a stupendous body. hats off to him for that. but so much of muscles has surely not done much good to his brain. the brainy and classy aamir whom we can see even in disasters like mangal pandey, has gone missing here. in places he shows his brilliance. but mostly totally absent.

7. Song shooting. The videos can liven up a movie experience. The way behka behka song was shoot i was really expecting something breathtaking to come as Ghuzharish was still left. But that disappointed me. A classic example why breathtaking locations is not enough to make a music video. The chemistry which cud be found otherwise among amir and asin, ws not there in this video. most of the scenes amir is walking, asin is walking...totally unlike Suraj hua madhyam which was shot in a similar location and was shot in the best possible way. again oye bachchu was a okay type song...lattu was a crappo which started brilliantly but then the song is not on screen for more than a minute...and i totally hated that item girl/ med student idea of jiya khan!

8. The plot was fucked up. nothing more i want to say.

Then you may ask what are those two points for if I absolutely hated the movie?

1. Trying to do something diferent will earn 0.5 points here.

2. Asin will bring a 0.5 points. She looks natural and apart from one or two scenes she's done justice to her character. she's stunning in more scenes than one...and i completely fell in love with a mature yet so kiddish girl. most importantly she doesnt look that sweet sixteen (which she's not obviously) and gives an image of a more of my age girl...which makes the sex appeal ever so great for atleast ppl belonging to my group.

3. In some places amir and asin make a great couple. I want them to see in a better movie. for that 0.5

4. More importantly, although the action scenes were good, they were shot without the emotioon. but comedy at places were real good and charming. especially those scenes involving asin.for those actioon and comedy i gave 0.5.

now then amir fans, wanna give me some blow?

Perils of a software engineer

2008-09-18T11:42:00.001-07:00

“So what’s next?” Asked my boss.

I looked at him. My eyes piercing, trying to gasp what could be coming in the next sentence! will the next sentence blow a deathblow to my career, will I be laid off, will I be given the pink slip and told “Many thanks for your service which were of no use to the company, and you with all your dignity may leave us now.”

Was this question a rhetoric one? the answer hidden in between to indicate, there was, actually, nothing coming up. We finally were standing at the end of a road, which suddenly without giving any prior notice plunged into the ocean from where we stood. There was no way out. There was nowhere to go. I was the puppet of a closed system, and suddenly that system was dying. It stopped circulating blood and things got deteriorated.

“Well?” Came a probing voice. From the same source. With the same kind of pre-destined sense of finiteness in itself.

“Could be anything. There may be an escalation. Or there might be a complaint.” I vaguely tried to reply.

We were standing in one of those numerous glass rooms of the IT park I work in. It was a bright day literally, although the outer brightness did not bring any happiness to me. glass-rooms were scary. And you go in them seldom. It was like a federal jail really. There were stony faced Project Managers, angry tech-leads, and in some cases when things went really wrong, group leaders. I had never been to a glass-room before. I had heard all sorts of stories about it.

One of my friend told me his horrific experience, where one glass-room visit had brought down his rating from an impeccable top to the dirty ground, in spite of clearing all the trainings in time, in spite of being the first one to fill in timesheet. Such are the perils of glass-room. Another friend told me, how he felt like inside a glass-room. The AC can not cool down a glass-room. Its usually like a blast furnace. Temperature grows up, up and above. Extravagant jargons fly around. The youngest person in the room is really fried on hot oil, messengers of satan beat him with harsh words, and the listless hapless fellow is reduced to dusts, with all his defense broken, all his mind crooked.

And there I was, in my short IT career, for the first time, in a glass room. I could see my project manager asking me questions impossible to be answered. Obviously I ain’t a clairvoyant fortune teller. I am just a mere coder, who can never foretell what will be the output of his code, leave alone this sort of turmoil filled earth where your whimsical client may kill you (not literally you but the contract) the next minute or he may himself go bankrupt.

I was afraid. I was thinking of all the gargantuan effects my mistakes can have on the company, the industry and the economy of the country.

These days its a fashion to go bankrupt for US companies. Who knows my American client will grab this smallest of opportunity to go that direction, and declare himself as one. US govt. in turn will have to come in rescue. They might see a deep conspiracy by Indian economic powerhouses in doing so. They might declare a war against India which will turn into a world war III demolishing economy of India in turn. OMG, demolishing indian economy is a bit too much I thought. Isn’t that the new avatar of invincibility ? Like they at Dalal street say so coolly?

My boss, turned his bespectacled, rude face towards me. “Do you even know what this can turn us into? We will be called novices by the client!”

Errr.. Novices?? Is that what this thing all about is?

After much ado I found out…

There was an error message I wrote in my code, “please do not provide garbaje values in the xml as it will be difficult to read by our production support guys who will read it manually.”

It was sent to the client who did not read the document. It was tested by professional testers (or so they claimed) and they did not find anything wrong with that. Now when it has gone live, a user has raised a defect stating that the spelling mistake in garbage is so eye catching that, there has been a million complaints about it.

And now we were, in the glass room! Doom looked at me with disdain. A million years of zero rating if I still manage to save my job, is sure to be the next best punishment.

The perils of a software engineer continues…

Intezaar

2008-09-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

I am nervous. Its been 3 long years since I had seen you. Since I held your hands passionately and kissed your lips. Its been 2 years since I had talked to you over the phone or on internet. Its been 1 year since the last of the emails reached my mail box, and the reply to which got lost in oblivion.

I have heard about you, in every friend gathering. I have handled zillions of questions related to you.. quite diplomatically. Without having to say the obvious which I kept hidden like a little secret like so many we had. Those little secrets we always had. I knew you are alright. I knew your life grew out of the path that I had chosen and that, divergence was the fate we had, was pretty clear to me.

I had relinquished the company of known faces. People with unknown names and background gave comfort to me. You know, when you keep on meeting newer people, you don’t have to answer personal questions. I had even confided in those people whom probably I would never meet again, to talk about life, to talk about the pain it throws your way. In many ways those strangers were a man (woman in some cases) with golden heart. Many of them told me the eternal truth of Geeta, that whatever happens is for good. I wasn’t looking for reassurance though. But it was relief for me, to let some oxygen enter the closed ventricle of my heart. Where there was nothing, now there is a bit of blood circulation.

For three years now, slowly but steadily I had to meditate to get my mind back on living. I was depressed for a long time. I was mad at myself. I felt guilty and at the same time tried to reason out my own bail. I remembered all that was said between you and me. I thought of all the close moments once the bulb is switched off in my bedroom. I thought of all the fights that torn us apart. Most of the cases I felt it was my fault. But that was too late for a confession. Or rather, that self acknowledgement was a mere act of reconciliation, something to get things straighter than what they were at that time.

I wanted to feel you by my side by taking deep breaths and the smell wasn’t there anymore. I wrote down numerous mails…then deleted them. I never called as all the previous efforts of talking had failed and turned into a dull exchange of silence.

Now that I am waiting here, at the arrival lobby of this airport, I do not know whether you will glow up seeing me there. Whether you will recognise me here. None told me you are coming. I came on my own. Overhearing someone saying this. You may choose to ignore me. You may even turn away if you happen to see me by chance. I felt a sudden surge of adrenalin rushing through my body. The tea cup I was holding was too hot to be held in control. Hence I threw it out. I looked away, there you were.

And then you smiled at me.

Rock On

2008-09-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

I am not a good reviewer. Neither am I a good watcher. Plus I suck at memory. Guess most of my upper compartment is made of highly volatile memory stuff. Hence what I see in a movie gets evaporated with a speed faster than light. Unless it’s a real crap movie, I seriously can’t remember any bloody thing about the movie. Be it Godfather be it the dark knight and be it the lord of the rings. 

Hence I am typing fast. But alas, nothing can beat the speed of light. Now after having written the first paragraph of this blog entry, I no longer remember what it was for if it was not for the title which I have written at the top. Yes, things are that desperate with me! Now before I forget anything more, let’s go back to business and talk about this movie.

Rock on is a refreshingly different movie. For a change no boy meets a girl. They don’t sing a song where invisible musicians and angel dancers flock around. The characters are not invincible. Shades of grey are aplenty. And yet, could not classify any of the characters as a dark one. That’s why I classify this to be a feel good movie, however the good feeling is not only about the story and the user experience (err, forgive my IT lingo), but about the movie itself. It’s well made. It talks its hearts content without any pretension. It is there to warm your heart. It does so effortlessly.

The characters are played quite flawlessly. Apart from one or two minor actors everyone has done well. Special mention is required for Farhan and Arjun Ram Pal. Farhan is charismatic and plain at the same time. Sings effortlessly with absolutely delighting expressions and has all the symptoms of a rock star. At least those I have seen during my college days, those fossils, kaktus guys, they are assimilated in Farhan. Yet when he is back in today’s world, as a successful executive, he glows there as well. He doesn’t talk to his wife, he is disturbed and nowhere he makes it over-emphatic, his simple dialogues and his sincere delivery makes it all too natural. He if he wishes to, can become a great actor like Irfan Khan like Rahul Bose and likes of them.

Arjun Ram pal astonished me. For years that have passed, I have seen this mountain of muscle sink into more obscurity from obscurity. And suddenly he rises and in what style. The failed guitarist Joe is a delight to watch. He fights with his wife, he fights with friends yet talks less, keeps his pain to himself, and does perfect justice to the role entrusted to him.

While KD is normal, I believe Rob was the weakest link among the cast. Prachi comes in a similar role to her sas bahu roles and she excels. The others are quite normal.

Now the movie doesn’t have a great story and all. It’s a normal winning story. But what it gets is a great making. And a brave director.

The movie is a winner and gives us a lot of insight on how to make a successful commercial movie.

The draw backs I would say, dialogues and the songs. When you are making a movie on music, the songs should have been a bit more authentic rock music and I seriously expected at least one punk/trash rock number in the OST. The dialogues are no where near what they were in DCH. But then DCH was a cult movie. And I have no grudges to keep it that way. This is a commercially successful enjoyable movie. It is nothing more than that, and it never pretends to be!

Now what I did not write about the movie is this is also a movie about friendship. Heart warming friendship. this movie talks about breaking up, coming together back again. it talks about how to shake hands give a hi five and forget the past and move on. this movie talks about life, and living on. This is the reason I like this movie.

Phew, writing down all that you wanted to write, is a difficult thing. But thank God I did it. Cheers.

There has been a storm

2008-08-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

There has been a storm here. At least so it seems. Dust, dirt, diversion lies around me, scattered. It’s an unwashed bed sheet that takes my weight now. Beneath that a filthy mat! Hundreds of wasted cigarette boxes and a beer can!

I can see my mobile lying there. Dead as I didn’t feel like putting it on charge! None will call me anyway. I keep on typing on my laptop cause there is none around whom I can say a word. Not that I am mad for finding someone, Not that I am sad to miss company. But solitude gives rise to questions of uncanny self-calamity.

At one corner in a plug, the all-out blinks on. I never switch it off. When I go to bed and make the room dark, that keeps blinking like a distant mirage which gives me hope. My sienheisser head phones are lying on one corner. It looks unused. But I have lost taste for music.

There has been a storm around. Or so it seems. Slimy creatures walk the earth which I trod upon. Often smashing them with feet gives me the sadistic pleasure that I not yet got rid of. There is blood around. That of the killed ones. Killed and obliterated from memory. Of friendship of trust. There is a spider weaving its net. I have ruined its effort to earn a livelihood a number of times, yet it keeps on. Perseverance lies around me. Not a drop inside. Intelligent thoughts roam inside my brain, none are listened to.

At one corner lies a heap of clothes. Don’t feel like washing them anymore. My expensive shoes have bore marks of filth. Never are they gonna get a gift of polish. What for is life? It lies around me in filth, in scum, in dirt. In endless diseases bacterias virii. None of them give me the gift of death.

Aamir

2008-08-03T01:37:00.000-07:00

Rating: ****
Casting: Rajiv Khandelwal

Its not necessary that a movie should always give out a message neither is it necessary for a movie to please everyone who watches it. So if the some people say its crap i am happy to listen why and start a debate on this.

Apart from that, I felt the movie had its short comings. Like the plot is not so believeable, a network of terrorists so well organised that they could actually follow aamir's every movement, whether in a hotel room or anywhere they could have found an easier manner to do a bomb blast. I don't see it to be the best of the methods to do that. But I had a suspicion that it was their method of engulfing aamir into their network. However I don't buy that crap! that storyline is weak.

But again, the movie is a thorough entertainer. Its got a gripping screenplay. The suspense is kept in amazing manner. Even better is the camera work. One sceen when it shows the doll which runs and stops captures the thoughts of aamir so well. Even if we don't classify it to be a great movie, its definitely one of the better movies Bollywood has produced offlate.

Lonely!! I am so lonely

2008-07-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

I sometimes feel so alone in this whole world. Its an uncanny and fearsome feeling. Especially when you feel so even during you are hanging out with friends, roaming the streets with as many as ten people…it scares the hell out of you. I don’t know many people who think like me. May be many do but few speak out.

This is increasingly getting intense in me. Not that I crave for company of people. Most of the time I will choose solitude than people giving me company if I am given a choice. That is most of the time. I have seen times when I desperately avoid people, at the same time craving for more. And throughout my life, the people I have craved for, are the ones who never became close to me. It’s a big irony and I don’t know why, but it is that way.

Hey readers, don’t get me wrong here. I am not talking about some boring one sided love thingy. It’s the friends you have around you.

There have been phases in my life when I have thought that I have found the one friend I want. My illusion has broken soon. Atleast three to four times I have thought in my life that this fellow thinks like me, and yet we could never become friends. You might say like a wise ass : perceptions are deceptive. But that doesn’t solve the problem that I am alone.

Some nights I walk alone the streets of Chennai. Some nights I take my bike out. I breeze past the well lit streets, the happy shopping malls, the churches, the café coffee days, the grinning couples, the kissing brides, the shabyatras and doldrums of the city life, and yet, everything freezes down. Everything just stops. And then I look around, there is none. A dark cover comes over the face of the city. Some scumbags here and there. A little law and a lot of anarchy.

When I was a kid, I always enjoyed my solitude. My little room, my small music system, my bookshelf and my own summer afternoons. I still search for those. Unfortunately none could be found!

poriborton

2008-07-20T03:56:00.000-07:00

akash ta ajkal neel nei jeno
ektu ki fyakashe lage na?
dhnoa jetuku ure mishe jai kolkatar bukete
sei gondho ta ar baki thake na

e sei gondher kotha bolchi ami
jake buke tene bishonno batash
mati te norom hat bulie dito
gaye makhie dito meyeder deergho shwash

ghorar keshor gulo elomelo kore dito
sei haoa ta ajo boi naki? moidan jure?
dupur e nidra jeto shohor er pran,ase
chola bhaja becha dokanir chokh jure

ekhono protikkha kore keu keu,
bhabe bodol er bodol hobe konodin
niswa dhulo mesha strand road e tanga
sobdo tulbe ghorar naal er orthoheen

bose theke theke prostor hoe jabo ami
ektu ektu kore ter pai buke
nihsobde hana dichhe faka gohbor
chokh duti gachhe kotore dhuke

chokher majhe sei neel ta dekhte pai
jei neel hariechhe akasher theke
sei haoa boye jai jothore jothore
ke jane khuje more kake

ekhono chhelemanushi kotha ase mukhe
gombhir protyuttor muchhe dai hasi
ekhono uttejona neche othe shirai
nei bhalobasa makha sei chumu rashi

matal er lekha

2008-07-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

maal kheyechhe matale
gachh bhorti kanthale
gof bhorti tel lagale
ki na bole chhagole
ki na khai paagole

botol kholo whiskyr
charpashe te jome bheer
chain khola N'murthyr
pentul khule nache meer
mane binei kori bir bir

chokh holo dhulu dhulu
dunia ke gelam bhulu
botol shes chai more chulu
ekta meye ke boli ILU
thappor khey chotkai ghilu

A Journey to remember

2008-04-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I went to attend a friend’s marriage to southern Andhra Pradesh. A district town called Guntur. It was a long boring journey followed by amazing and thought provoking rituals and customs which I had never experienced before. At the same time, it evoked some long lost memories too.

When we were on our way to ponnur village, in Guntur district some 45 mins away from the Guntur town riding an ac qualis, amidst thamil dialogues flowing all over my ears about which I hardly understood a single word, and a telugu song loudly being played in the car radio I was drifting away mentally to a far far away place. Saikat ‘Mấmệ’ Mondol as we fondly used to call him, had his sister’s marriage and all in the hostel of CEMK were invited. Well almost all.

It was a hot hot April. The power plant near by was emitting more and more smokes day by day. And it felt like we have a forest on fire nearby. Days were scorching and nights were no better off. Only a few moments of respite was the cool breeze blowing from the river Rupnarayan.

Many of us were not much eager to go. But I was. There were two reasons for that. Mame requested me a lot for coming like he did to many others, and I am poor guy who can’t say NO. The second reason was that was the chance to spend a night with friends outside hostel in the remotest part of Bengal. I had wild fantasies about rural Bengal. The small huts, green paddy field and bullock carts, the shadow covered ponds and the quiet afternoons. But as they say life is not as rosey as it seems to be in dreams.

[Will update this as I write more :-)]

Hostel Part III

2008-03-12T17:21:00.001-07:00

Hostel days are gone into the yellowed pages of my past now. And yet so near they are to me. All those bawals, ragging, teasing girls from the darkened hostel balcony, stealing food from canteen, night adventures to Bishu paji’s dhaba come back on idle afternoons. They still cheer me up and enlighten my day.

The other day on yahoo messenger we met. 6 of college mates. Two in London. The rest in the US. And 80% of them married. But all we talked about is hostel. And our life back then.

Lets look at some hostel lingo:

Bawal: verb | a fight, quarrel. Apparently for no good reason.

Magibaz: adjective | a guy who is always after girls and with girls. A rude word usually used for swearing.

Caora: adjective | a guy who is naughty!! Well that’s what I call an understatement.

Bedo: adjective | a guy who is an avid prankster.

Tomar bhai hoechhe: a phrase | usually used to sedate an opponent, a swear sentence meaning you have got a brother. Apparently indicating….. Mail me if you still don’t get the meaning.

*C: an adjective | this is equivalent to the English F word. Anything can be suffixed with a C word meaning you c like that adjective (prefix to C) or by that object etc.

So(n)te: adjective | A guy who is relatively well behaved and well mannered.

Jatha : adjective | A guy who looks considerably older than he actually is. Depending on how old he looks he can be also called kaka.

Kaka: relational adjective | A guy who comes to hostel to sell newspaper, breakfast, food, kabadi, or who is caretaker, who cooks food at canteen, who cleans the campus, in all a guy who is not a student or a teacher. Even a librarian once was referred to as Kaka.

Banka: Noun | the aspiring HOD of EIE (at our time he was aspiring and later on fulfilled his aspiration).

Dobka: Adjective | usually a girl with big boobs.

Pre-Historic Dadu: Noun | The legendary grandfather who looked like a dinosaur who has not been fed for 1 million years. Favourite trend was lighting a cigarette for 2 puffs and then extinguishing it to have it later. An IITian and a respectable figure.

Jackson: Noun | The most respectable figure around. The then HOD of EIE.

Toton: Noun | The Hod of CSE. Needed n no of attempts to utter a word correctly. Where N is his degree of excitement.

TechnoPakhi: Noun | A mate of mine. Nicknamed like this because of his exceptional figure. Needed two underwears to hold the jeans hang on to his waist.

Chhok: Verb | this is machination to get a girl.

KKD: Noun | Many believed he was some sort of relative to the JKD. But one of the most notorious and loved guys around.

Appo: Noun | this is Kolaghat version of Dating. Usually performed on the numerous culverts in the campus or deserted lanes in the township or in minimarket nearby.

Chaton: Noun | Ragging.

I think this much is enough for today. Will come back with more from direct heart of my hostel…

Breaking Out ... Alone for the first time

2008-03-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

I had just given madhyamik.

I was 16 exactly.

And had a 3 months gap in front of me

I wanted to go somewhere…somewhere alone.

Obviously there were huge obstacles….mom's tears and dad's precautionary NO. And to add to the injury there was my sister constantly teasing me as BABU which rightly said is a nickname my mom used to use but in this case became a pain in the arse.

i was adamant

More so because my mate Pat had been to odlabari all alone riding an intercity train which runs through the baikunthapur forest range and described me (with great deal of envy causing tone) the beauty of the journey...and it seemed to me like an adventure only shankar (of the fame of mountain of the moon) could achieve.

I was desparate.

I was eager and keen to show i am no kiddo.

I wanted to show the world that I too can take on those challenges.

Also the possible beauty of the road engrossed me...the simple train journey became like a hitch hiking adventure

and after much bickering
and a bit of water shedding
finally I got a nod from dad

Now when I look at it
After having traveled all the way to the other part of the world it looks kiddish to me. But then it was a small step which built up the hunger in me to look for the unknown. The journey wasn't a long one. It was only from Siliguri to farakka
where my uncle aunt and there two daughters stayed.

Dad was a railway service man. He got me a ticket in the second class sleeper on Kanchunjangha express. A train which will stop at farakka junction after 6 hours since the time it starts from NJP AKA New Jalpaiguri Station.

That day my dad didn’t take his cycle while going to the station which was his office too. He and I boarded a rickshaw from our home. I left home, my mom, didi and dadu back there standing at the doors. It was time to move on. It was time to face the world. As the rickshaw moved on along the roads of Siliguri I could still hear the chants of “Durga Durga” from my mom. I could see the pale face of my sister. And my dadu’s trembling hand giving ashirbad while I did a traditional pranam.

I was feeling weak. I was thinking of jumping from the rickshaw and running back to mom’s lap. The warmth of my dad beside me in the rickshaw reassured me. Dad was telling me how to face things. Those last minute suggestions you know. How never to talk to a stranger. How never to take anything from a stranger. And those instructions while were delivered to boost my morale were in a way denigrating it. But I didn’t chicken out. And How I thank god for giving me enough courage for not shitting in my pants while I alone in the platform waited for the train.

The train was late for 4 hours. I waited and waited. My dad came and went back to work. And all the time I was wishing dad should be there when the train comes. Or else this could be the last time I am seeing my dad.

It was supposed to happen at 12 O clock noon. It finally happened 4 pm. Dad was losing patience and asked me a few times to leave the plan and go home. I was determined to take it on. I was not a guy to chicken out. I had to prove to my own eyes to be a grown up.

When finally the train came, I boarded it, and watched back to my dad’s face. There was no worry. He was quite confident I would make it. He was worried alright for the time I would reach farakka, but then my uncle had given word that he would be there with his car at the station.

The train started. So did my loneliness. There were some people sitting along with me. A big fat marwari guy. Who could not frighten me much as I knew before he tries anything silly I could run away. There were a family with a small kid who was crying hard. I smiled at the kid, and told in my mind, “grow up kid, at least you are going with your mom!! Look at me…I am all alone in this world.”

Things got bad soon. We reached guisal. The famous train accident site! And the train stopped due to some signal failures. It was like amazing actually. A train a man made creation standing in a place from where, where ever you see you could only see miles and miles of paddy fields. I wanted to go down to look out and see the beauty. But parents’ words held me back.

I opened the window and felt the cool wind all over my body. It was giving me strength and suddenly I felt I have crossed 2 hours or 1/3rd of my journey already. Out of nowhere there were chai walas. I had a tea. And dozed off. Then when I woke up, the train had just started and it was 8pm in the night.

I wasn’t worried much. But I was thinking if my uncle could not manage to come at that late night what I would do. And thinking hard only did weaken my confidence. And slowly I left it at that.

It was growing darker. I never knew that even when it’s completely dark it still goes on to become even darker with time. It was something new I was learning with every moment and I was fascinated with life that was around me.

I opened my diary I had, and started scribbling something. This caused me to doze off very soon. I woke up with a shoulder jerk from someone!!

A stranger!!

A guy in mid forties with specs on, and looking like a TT was pushing me…

“Khoka, are you the son of Mr. PK Paul? The CRS of NJP?”

I was shell shocked…this guy knows it all!! Bloody hell what is he!!

Then I nodded and the guy was all smiles..”Don’t be afraid khoka…Your dad just wanted me to check out whether you are alright or not!”

I was thinking, “jeez dad!! You are embarrassing me in front of every one here!!”

And was reasonably annoyed at the same time I felt it funny too thinking about my dad pacing up and down from bedroom to drawing room in worry. And my mom sitting in a corner with an all gone face. And I knew how much they love me!

I reached farakka alright. At night 2 am. My uncle was there despite a storm warning. And in his 1972 premiere I reached his bungalow quite safely. Masi told mom had called at least 10 times by then. I called them up and with that my first journey to the wilderness was over…

It was not as much full of beauty, revelation, adventure as probably pat had faced or not 10% as romantic as Shankar in the mountain of moon, but that was a very original experience which I still cherish. Life was not going to be same again.

A Saturday worth Blogging!

2008-02-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

A busy Saturday at last. Oh how much do I enjoy busy Saturdays. Lots of useless stuff to do. Lots of useless places to go. Lots of useless people around. And endless useless stuff to rant about.

How did I pass the day? A great movie! A great dinner! Some long forgotten faces! And a fight in the club.

Phewww… now that’s something isn’t it?

We friends went to a movie at Harrow. Which one did you ask? Well what else the (in)famous Jodhaa Aakbar. And I must say the movie isn’t even worth spending 3 and half hours in the hall. Well there were couple of typical gwarikar’s romantic moments which I liked. I liked Hrithik’s childishness in somescenes and some places his emperor like rage. His command on acting is increasing and that’s a healthy sign for Bollywood. But the movie shows how pathetically inexperienced Bollywood is in handling periodic dramas.

I wonder why Indian directors fail take a clue out of great Hollywood epics like Gladiator or Troy or Kingdom of Heaven. People in India who are eager to make a historical movie should take some training sessions from Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson or Wolfgang Peterson. I mean the war in this movie almost is from the age of Ramanand Saagar’s Mahabharat and nothing more than that. Although the movie improves in the later half where Sujamal is being chased by afghan archers on horse and being shot at the scene is taken excellently.

But overall the film made me feel sick. On one side there was this gibberish farsi urdu mix that was given to Hrithik as his dialogues on the other side really bad acting from Akbar’s mother, some of the extra actors. Then there is endless useless song sequences and a timeless movie Yuckkkkkkk

Whatever the rest of the day was good. Met some old time friends. Tom and Shelly who got married recently had come to Watford to catch up. So we had gone club hopping. Then there was a fight at the Columbia press. Bloody noses, torn shirts, yells of “Freeze! Or I will shoot you!”, Swearing, in the fucking mean time getting served drinks for free and a bloody hell broken loose! All at the same time.

Movie Review: Halla Bol

2008-01-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

Movie: Halla Bol
*ing: Ajay Devgan, Vidya Balan, Pankaj Kapur
Rating: ** 1/2

Review:

Well, I am no movie reviewer, so I will write only what I felt about this movie.

1. This movie had a strong ambition.
2. This movie had a good story.
3. This movie had a strong actor to support both the above.
4. This movie had a strong actress to support the all of the above.
5. Yet this movie fails to achieve any single impact in the audience’s mind.

You will wonder why! I did too, and this is what I found out the reasons to be:

1. The movie has poor dialogues.
2. The movie has very poor script. Which makes all the decisions taken in the movie to be hasty and illogical.
3. This movie like every other RajKumar Santoshi film suffers from melodrama.
4. This movie like every other Raj Kumar Santoshi film suffers from over simplification of things.

I won’t give more details here because I am bored of typing. But do go and watch this movie to get a feel of how a good storyline and a great idea can be wasted!

Halla bol !!

Hostel Part II

2007-12-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

[This is a continuation of the earlier story I did about my hostel life. The same precautions and parental guidance are valid in this case too. ]

Hostel helped me to grow up. Our college and hostel was located in the same campus. It was far from the city. So there were hardly any time pass apart from playing football or cricket in the afternoon after college is over. We spent our time by going college, by not going college, by drinking tea at chacha’s shop just outside the campus, or eating the fabulous ghoognee(a chatpata dish made of chhola) with mudi.

Ragging days were over and it was time to befriend between ourselves. Freshers welcome was coming soon. Every college has its own heritage of giving fresher’s welcome. Ours was the fabulous choreography, of course by our senior girls. None admitted it but I am sure everyone loved it. There were really beautiful girls giving us a dancing welcome, something we had never thought we would ever get, not even if we someday win a nobel prize. And our mind raced. For seniors, whoever reads this post, “No, we strictly didn’t fantacise about your girlfriend!”. We were a bunch of loosers on the second floor. None of us were handsome, none of us ever capable of doing anything in life. We stayed in the anonymity of our second floor life. Ground floor and first floor knew that there are people who are there on top of them, but none really knew who are these morons. We became friends through this united second floor feeling. And there came a blow.

As soon as the ragging days were over, people came out with their own ideas of harassing other people. When I say harassing, it was not exactly harassment, it was simple fun but sometimes a bit overboard. At least the person on whom the prank is being played will definitely think so.

I remember one night after a tough day at college (having done woodworks at the workshop it was definitely one of those rare physical labour days ) I was sleeping hard. Suddenly a splash woke me up. I was so deep in sleep that suddenly it felt like a flood has come into my room. and I woke up, in the darkness I could figure out a guy moving outside my room through the open window. I woke up to fully to realise a dirty underwear hanging on top of the mosquito net of my bed giving that flash effect!

My friends and I retaliated. We invited those two guys who did this to play prank on two of the other guys from our floor. They agreed not knowing the gangster move we played beneath this. They had cocme to scare the two of the most peaceful guys of our floor. And the plan we had was, as soon as they come, we have to shout as if thieves have broken into. And then give those two a nice beating. The plan went on excellently and the next morning, there were cries of pain from two rooms.

These were petty hostel rivalries. These faded away as we grew up. Slowly there formed groups among ourselves.

1. Group A: group of nerds. Every college has them. They read hard, usually bespectacled, use a lot of PJs and laugh out loud at them. Some people considered me to be a part of this bunch initially due to good results in the beginning. As my results went down gradually, they lost all the hope they had about me and I was no longer (not even in ppl’s thoughts) a part of this.
2. Group B: group of Casanovas. These people were hugely interested in girls. From day1 they had their eyes set up on picking up girls. They talked about which girl to be picked up. They used to bet on who will pick which girl. They even went on to bet which hostel guys will have all the girls and all stupid stuff.
3. Group C: group of sports buff. A lot of my friend circle belonged to this group. This people ate, drank and dreamt of sports. There were people who used to play football after coming back from college then during the evening, there started the looong period of table tennis, carom volleyball etc. And if it was winter, we had our beloved cricket and badminton tournaments.
4. Group D: group of street smarts. The most respected group of the college. These were the people loved by all. They might be short on funda, short on their patience to study but they had a brain to overcome all. These people usually featured in all activities of college enthusiastically, scored good ranks and had a high CGPA.
5. Group E: group of addicts. By addicts I don’t mean cocaine or heroine though. But I am sure there were a couple of fellows regularly taking those. The most popular in thing in hostel was N10 tablets. Another spasmo tablet. Never knew what they are for or what pleasure they gave to these people. Some of them ruined their lives. Some, when I last heard, were on the verge of doing the same.
6. Group F: group of madhatters. I love to call them so as essentially these people never fit into any known types. They were a brand of their own. Some of them singers, some of them poets, some of them loners, some of them gamers and some of them most creative people on earth!

More to come on this…a lot more groups were there. Stay tuned…

Coast to Coast

2007-12-16T16:24:00.001-08:00

Made by Andrea Micheloni

People of the Sun

2007-12-09T14:57:00.000-08:00

Someone has tagged me! In my long bored blogger life for the first time. And I am thankful to her...But this brought about some problems to me. The rules of this tagging thingy as I got to understand is that you need to

1. Put shitload of songs onto your music player (have to be a digital player...winamp on your lappy, Ipod, whatever you've got)
2. Keep it on shuffle mode (if this doesn't make sense to you, choose a different player)
3. For each question hit the next button and you don't have to really listen to the songs...
4. You must write the name of the song that comes up like this as the answer of the question...whatever goddamn it means.

As I told I don't even listen to songs that much. I have one play list made of a few selected songs and I listen to them again and again and again...and then when I get bored with them I give them a break....and then I listen to them again! :-(

I know I am pathetic. But what to do? So I got hands on my roomies hard disk and loaded all I could see onto Winamp!!
Now the rest was quite easy.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
Lyla (Eric Clapton)
:-O Don't know why but I do say that!!

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Somebody to love (Jefferson airplane)
Oh ya baby that’s who I am!

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
The first cut is the deepest (Sheryl Crow)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
London calling (The Cash)
Yah it is infact. From tomorrow starts another week of to and fro journey of London...I hate my job!

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Sorrow (Pink Floyd)
Another bingo!! How am I doing this!!

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Living Las Vegas (Sheryl Crow)
I want to do that maan!! That's my life's motto...

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Things have changed (Bob Dylan)
I never wanted to...but you know things do change...sometimes for worse!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Bring your own bomb (Systems of a down)
They do bomb me sometimes though! :-)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Just might make me believe (Sugarland)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Touch my bum (the cheeky song) - by cheeky girls
If you ask such stupid questions again...I will continue to be rude like this! :X

DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
The Road Jack Beat(Cassidy, freestyle RAP)
I have no idea how to tell it to you...

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Anarchy in the UK(Sex Pistols)
Yes indeed you have brought anarchy in my life while in UK...

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Pump It (Black Eyed Peas)
Yah that's pretty much sums up it.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
The Seventh Seal(Van Halen)
By the way to you really mean grow up? Or you mean grow old? How do I grow up more?

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Downtown train(Rod Stewart)
I am in trouble today!

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
A million love songs(Gary Barlow)
I love you too, ppl!

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
You Got Another Thing Coming(Judas Priest)
well ahem .... may be!

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
A Design for Life(Manic Street Preachers)
I am flattered!

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Running with the devil (Val Halen)
yes that's what I do all the time!

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Can't anybody hold me down (Puff Daddy and Mase)
None can dude!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Sacrifice (Eric Clapton)

Please don't .. I really don't mean it!

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
People of the sun(Rage against the machine)

Phewww!! and you thought I am afraid of being tagged? :P

Hostel part 1

2007-12-01T17:48:00.000-08:00

[This post is for consenting adults only! I bear no responsibility for those echor e paka, less than 18 year olds who read this! a guardian must accompany them while reading this post, and decide whether or not to let their sons to an engineering college hostel! For girls who have lived in the pinky pinky paradise of their mother's lap the following post might seem to be rude, for the guys and other type of girls this was my life in hostel and I am being absolutely honest about it...There will be more posts coming on it as time passes by]

No dude, this ain’t gonna be the review of the Quentin Tarantino flick. Those are not as amusing as real life can be. Trust me my hostel life was ruder, violent and a step in the guy’s world with a hilarious touch on it. A whole new world where you get to know guys from Bengal’s remotest places to the posh and sexy ones telling us stories of hooking with a high class escort! Life was never as educating as this.

I went to a residential engineering college in West Bengal. Life one fine day became different for me. There you go alone in a completely different world devoid of any parental insurance, empty of motherly care. It was a man’s world.

First day when I faced ragging I just came to the college to get admitted. My father was with me. He was a man of middleclass values and morality. Already pouring his anxiety in my ears as words of wisdom and advice, he was visibly worried to let his son be alone. There were those much feared tribe of people around, the so called seniors looking like street goons with their unshaved faces. I got called from a second year hostel. My father waited outside. I, worried and nervous, went ahead towards the hostel while my father waited on the street. It was a classic scene. I was growing up.

My first ragging with my father standing nearby was not much exciting. It was a bunch of kind seniors who were good natured and asked me couple of half wit questions before asking me to go join my father.

As time passed by I grew into the hostel. Or rather hostel grew inside me like a parasite. Or better to say probably a mutual symbiotic relationship was created between me and hostel. All the hostilities from the seniors were nothing before this growing bond. This was a bond which taught me life.

I still remember the first few days, every day after college some or other seniors used to call me. I was probably one of the most unlucky guys around. I was a quiet calm fellow always living in the shadows. But somehow my hunters would find me out. I was pretty naïve at that time. Having come from Siliguri I didn’t know many things. Yes, I hadn’t seen a full porn movie yet. It was banned on siliguri cable not even on the late night. I hadn’t known the local slang for masturbation! I didn’t know the exact terminologies of a female anatomy. I didn’t know cursing to the fullest extent.

So the ragging sessions became learning sessions for me. I learnt all these things plus a few more. I learnt how to read a news paper when after every word you insert “My C***k” and then after another word you insert “your c**t”. I learnt what will be the trajectory if a drop of water falling from tip of Madhuri’s nose to the very end and places it would travel. I learnt how to calculate PCM of myself. I learnt also how to propose to a senior girl!

Our college in that manner was civilised when we joined. None actually got me naked and spanked me on my butt. None actually ordered me to have a zebra fashioned moustache (probably because my moustache was quite thin and unnoticeable that time). None actually made me play “lalu bhulu” with a fellow guy. And I am thankful to my seniors for these. As, if I were asked to do these things, God knows what I would have done, but for one thing was sure the guys who were coming to join this hostel as our successors, things could only get worse.

Battlefield Gatwick!

2007-11-25T15:05:00.000-08:00

I was hiding behind a bush. I could feel the bullets raining all around me. I was crawling on the muddy soggy woodland. My goggles were all blurry with myst. It was a cold winter morning and I had a bad hangover from the previous night. Suddenly there was something moving on far right of me. I was beneath the remnants of dead fallen tree. I could not move, as if I did the whole tree would move and the “something” moving on my right would not think twice before shooting me. I moved my righthand slowly. I tried to aim the gun I had towards the guy on my towards this object. My shoulder bumped against the wood while doing so. I froze. I stopped breathing. I tried to gauge whether my object got my position. Then I moved again. I positioned my gun with more care this time. Aimed and shot a burst of 10 shots.

“Player down!” shouted the referee. And the player was down, and then came a burst of shots from another near by tree. One of the black musketeers were there and there I went down.

We were playing paintball at Gatwick. It was a place with three marshals and a bunch of crazy people. We ran across woodlands to grab the opponents base, we defended castles, we attacked castles, got divided into different wings we called each other alfa and deltas we had a lot of bruises all over our bodies, and most importantly we had fun.

Calcatians don’t bite….3

2007-11-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

So this time what I really saw in calcutta? Nothing much really. This city has been able to keep its old smell with a hint of make over though. It wears miniskirt these days and kisses without shame. PDA is not a thing to feel shame about. Sex is on the rise as it is evident by all the MMS sites and the number of Bengali scandals there. Yes I am a pervert and I frequently venture into those sites. Do you have a problem?

Somethings which caught my eyes this time was the plethora of tv channels. There seemed to be n number of tv channels on the cable network. Star ananda, 24 hours, ne bangle etc etc. and the good part of it was that all these are news channels. Local issues really needed a voice and these channels if managed and handled properly can be just that.

But like all other Indian news channels these also tend to go overboard with certain issues. Just like they got with Rizwanur case, and just like they got with the UFO case. Star ananda had called two eminent astronomers to understand that the glowing thing on the sky is nothing but our very own venus and not a UFO. Jeesus Christ. Also like their news paper star ananda almost covered all the daily events in Suchitra Sen’s life in those few days while she was under treatment in belleview nursing home. Can imagine why she took this self imposed denial from the media and limelight. Guys for gods sake, no need to imitate English media. They have already killed their princess by doing this, do we need to go the same way? Also is personal life of a celebrity so much of an enticing thing for the avg Bengali people? I would say there is a lot of good thing which Indian media can learn from the british media, and being neutral can be one of them. But I saw our media is more keen on learning the paparazzy tricks.

Star ananda had its mind set on showing off mamata banerjee on the nandigram issue. Then CPM cadres attacked their pressmen and things changed overnight. The much praised and so called cultured CM of west Bengal suddenly became the demon of the day. And ananda went all ga ga about the cpm brutalities in Nandigram. We are not kids and we understand politics dude. Try something more subtle next time.

This Calcutta reassured me of one thing that human beings still live in this city. The procession by city’s eminent intellectuals in protest of inertness of government in nandigram was something which showed being unpolitical sometimes can be the biggest political statement. But it also raised a point of doubt in my mind. How much of hearitness was really in it. How much of all these hullagullas were driven by true concern for people? Why this voices didn’t shout before? Why now? The unpolitical character became a bit dirty and a lot more unclear in my mind. But I hope it was simple conscience which made people do these things and not by some other agenda driven by others. Calcutta a city of aantels truly showed still there are aantels who apart from being aantels can sometime think of real and hard lived issues as well.

Calcutta also revealed its real smell in the night of navami when I went on a night out trip through the city to have a glimpse of the most beautiful puja mandaps of this year. And all I can still remember is the foul smell of urine everywhere. Calcutta pissed and it pissed in its pants it seems. A place like New Alipore can be so dirty is something I can hardly imagine.

More to come on Calcutta and calcatians…

Calcatian’s Don’t Bite……………..2

2007-11-09T12:00:00.001-08:00

Since I am such a comment hunter and my reader(s!!!???!!!) have threatened me of not giving comments until and unless I write some good things about Calcutta, here I am and there you go.

Calcutta as was portrayed in my previous topic looked like a city of brainless dumpers (god knows what that means) or in other words a city of modern English educated smarties. Which I am afraid is a too much of generalization of a city which far far greater than any other city of India in colour, in culture and in liveliness. If you want to see Calcutta and its life in true colors, u have to come with me for a ride which I took on last Wednesday.

I was supposed to go to a bank at Girish Park. When I finished my work, it was 1pm and I still had quite sometime at hand. I chose to roam around and capture some of the city moments in my camera.

1. I traveled to Park Street. I went to the place where thousands of people came together to do a civilized protest against the mysterious death of Rizwanur Rahaman. I sat on the pavement, there was nothing worth capturing there at that point. There was nothing which I could take a snap of and show people that see this is Calcutta and this is how the people of Calcutta are. That is a pity. But sitting there at the pavement, I could feel the energy, the sentiment and the same sympathy that those people had who came to light a candle for a guy who is from a different religion, whose life probably doesn’t have similarity to any of ours life, who was born anonymous and death made him famous. I have little to do with Rizwanur’s death and nor do I know what all went in between the husband and wife’s families. I was simply amazed at the response people gave and the way they accepted a muslim fellow’s marriage to a rich hindu girl. I am sure if you were in somewhere south or somewhere west of India, this would not happen. Bravo Kolkata.

2. The next stop was at Victoria memorial. I still remember the day when my parents brought me to this architectural wonder. I looked at it with awe. This time was no exception. I looked at the memorial, and was lost in memory until something broke my spell. A guy, in yellow t-shirts and jeans was saying to a girl, “bolo amar bou hobe?” [“Tell me,will you be my wife?”]. and quite amazingly the girl responded with a soft and quite Hollywood style kiss on the guy’s lips. A sweet simplicity which is the bloodline of this city touched me and that sweet sound of the kiss kept on ringing in my head and heart for the rest of the day. People suddenly have grown up here.

3. The last part was the most tiring of my journey. I was returning home and I had to catch a local train from Dumdum junction to the suburban area where I live. It was a train fully crowded. And as usual there were hastles at every station. People had to struggle with great vengeance. In Agarpara stop, I noticed an old man (I guess his age would be somewhere near 75) running after the train and jumping on to it with an amazing dexterousness. Kolkata lives at the age of 75 too. It struggles to live on, and it succeeds. Then there was this boul(a kind of singer from the Vaishnava Sect) who started singing a song in the tune of a rabindrasangeet in that jampacked train. Then there was this blind kid, who had a speaker on his back, a harmonium hanging from his shoulders and singing, “ek bar bidai de ma ghure asi” and suddenly I was all emotional. May be it owes a lot to the fact that I have been staying abroad or that I love my mother tongue dearly but still I would give credit to the city which stays, at this age of superfast globalization, a virgin when it comes to its people and their unscathed lifestyle. These trains are the bloodlines of Calcutta, and they truly portray the life of it.

Don’t know whether I have blabbered a lot in this post or I have talked nonsense too much. May be I’m a sentimental fool to think in these lines but these were the moments which touched me quite a lot and I am just being true to myself.

Calcatians don’t bite….1

2007-11-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

I have never been a calcatian. I have always had lot of problems with this city. To tell you the truth we never got along nicely. Neither did we this time.

As the readers know, I grew up in a small town called Siliguri. Growing up in small towns have their disadvantages and advantages. I knew greenery. I knew how nice it is to look at kanchanjungha right when you wake up in the morning. I knew how nice it feels when all of a sudden you meet someone on the road and smile back. I knew how to go on your cycle and get lost in a rain forest. I knew how cold exactly the water of Teesta is. Like this I knew a lot of things. There were things I didn’t know as well.

When I passed the so called hurdle of JEE which is most dreaded and respected GOD of West Bengal these days, I came to join college in a small village and I got to know some Calcutta guys. Guys of Calcutta were a thing to see for us. Although siliguri is a quite modern city compared to the other mofussils of Bengal (Thanks to the proximity of the nepali and pahari gorkhas- the girls are simply to good in the hills), still we always felt a tinge of inferiority complex when we met those convent educated Calcutta guys. Fortunately for us though, there were only a few to fall into this category.

I still remember a conversation from my early days in college, where someone was telling about his preparations before JEE counseling. He actually got a fair amount of guess (!!??!!!) of how much he is gonna rank (which incidentally was something so obscure I have no idea how he got it right), and he went around to all the colleges he could get admission to find out which college has which dept in shape. That was the time when private colleges were forming up in Bengal. We hardly had 6 colleges under private control, and we being the backbenchers had to choose one of those alone. Whatever, my point is not how this guy did his research and all, or what all parameters he actually calculated to say which dept is good in which college, or whether he did some crash course from AICTE for accreditation of colleges! My point is calcatians do these things, they do these things simply to show their class and we were so much shadowed by the calcatian’s aura I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I didn’t do any research at all, one of my teachers told me that I was an idiot not to get through JU or BESU, so I can go to hell and get admitted to any engineering college. Another of my teachers told me that I should look for electronics and gave me two colleges’ names which he believed was good. I kept faith on my teacher. While in counseling, the guy asked me what I want, I said I want electronics, that guy replied u have the following options. I heard one known name in that options list (which was a very short list though), and there I was getting admitted to a college and making the most important decision of my life (or atleast it seemed to be so at that juncture of my life). So you see we small people (a direct translation of “chhote log”) don’t stand a chance when it comes match a calcatian. There was another guy who within the first few days announced that he was from South Point school which has the world record of most no of students in a class. I and a few others who were from the land of “far far away”, were awestruck again. South Point!!! The school of all those bespectacled geniuses whose pictures feature in the front pages after every HS or Secondary results, those who clearly announce after their feat that they want to do research in NASA or treat poor people of India, make medicines of cancer, win noble prizes, fuck Katie Moss, lick G W Bush’s arse and God knows what! Then he announced another bombshell, the higher secondary topper was his batch mate and he copied the last sum of the second paper mathematics from this higher sec topper to secure his 80%. He also announced he has never believed in luck, he believes in being at the right place at the right time with the right people. God Damn us small towners.

These people had a different chain of thought in their heads. We didn’t know a lot of things at that time, and that is the essence I am trying to give out in my meaningless essay. Have u got it? If not its not your problem, you see we people don’t know to write English properly. Never read in convents you know! I remember one of my friends wife quipping about this strange breed. SHe told me about one from this tribe saying once "Ishhhh...this road is so kada pachpach. so disgusting u know!" Readers who don't understand bengali I am sorry i do not have enough knowledge in english to translate it.

[this is the first of a chain of posts I wish to do about calcutta and things i like and I don't like about this great and beautiful city.... the starting I am doing with a not so pleasant note but keep reading and I am sure you will find that I am not so much nagging about thsi city after all...]

Taking life as it goes…

2007-11-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

It’s not an easy job. It’s not an easy job to take life as it goes, to take it easy. It creeps in silence; it advances its army of darkness in your mind. And slowly it engulfs your senses. The expectations fall apart, and suddenly the whole world becomes black and white loosing all its animated colors.

When I grew up, I grew up reading Sarat Chandra, Tagore’s romantic works. My father gave me a book on English poetry’s romantic age. That was an amazing book with small annotations in my father’s unintelligible handwriting on the margin. I read those poems with the eyes of Columbus looking at the new world. The attraction towards the fairer sex became known to me.

I wanted to fall in love like every other adolescent of my age. Romanticism became a way of life for me. I still remember those lively discussions with my mates about the definition of love and how to find them. I thought I knew it, and it’s only a matter of time to find it. I wanted to create something like those poems and I knew it by heart that it’s possible only if you fall, and fall hard in love.

There were these numerous diaries that my dad used to get from different well wishers, and I loved those. Those became the first breeding ground for my poems. I spent sleepless nights in the thoughts of an unknown lady who will make my life more charming, more delightful. Love was all over me and unlike kids of today I didn’t know something so powerful is not something of a child’s play.

All these things at a point became obsession for me. I fell in love almost everyday with the girl sitting next to me, with the girl whom I talked to for one minute to ask a question in my biology tuition, with the girl who on an ashtami was wearing that beautiful sari and that hypnotizing perfume.

And quietly, deep inside my heart I knew I have never known love. I wondered around the city on my bicycle only to see my school mates roaming around with good looking girls on their way back from tuition. I saw a lot of my seniors in school settling down with the girl of they loved. I envied them, as the grass is always greener on the other side.

Later I thought one need not look for love. It is something that should look for you. And someone told me that whatever happens to you is for good. Although the latter one is a cliché and everyone knows about it, at this point I started believing it as it came out of a girl and she let me know this after turning down the first offer I could ever frame up or rather to say could accumulate enough courage to place.

I grew up with all these. Not having love in life was something that demoralized me. I always wanted to have someone to talk to. Someone to share my heart’s content with. With all due respect to my mom, she could not possibly be the one to share a growing up kid’s all the thoughts. She could not become the one. My continuous hunt went on.

When I met her, I was 24. Not really a kid anymore. Living away from my parents had already given me a bit of maturity. All 18 years in a boy’s school had taken its toll and I was never smart enough to talk to girls till this point. Now things were changing. I was no longer desperate and I was no longer single and looking. Rather I was only single.

We had some previous connections to get us introduced. Both of us were aliens in a new city. We didn’t know what to do and how to live out our life in there. We spent time together. Weekends came and passed; days became long and then short again. Our proximity became unmatched to any past time. Suddenly one day I, for the second time in my life, fell again. I asked the question and straight came the answer “NO”.

But this time there was a separate tinge in the answer, a little pickle like taste, a bit of spice and that no remained in my life till date. How sweetly one can say a yes in disguise of a NO! Life changed for me. For the first time I was a proud boyfriend of a nice girl. Things are never this straight in life. Like the countless waves in marina beach, events in life come and go and the only thing they leave behind is the wet sand. Our relation too became sour, sourer and sourest, when we decided to part. Parting was not an easy job at least not for me. She seemed to take it quite easily. I could never learn the trick. Probably the born romantic in me didn’t let me learn it. I broke. I even got determined to win her back. I swore that she will never be happy without me. I cursed the distance between us, I cursed my destiny. But as an end result, I was back to square one, this time more devastated than ever. I don’t know how these events take place. Are there any rules of statistics, probability which govern them? Are there any laws of natural phenomena which can rationalize why people behave as irrationally as I did? As I said in the beginning, it’s never easy to take life as it goes, and it’s harder to take life easy. Loves labor was lost, and so am I.

[A fictitious diary of a broken mind]

Dadu

2007-10-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

I have always been influenced by elders. Elders have always blinded me with their achievements, their struggle for existence and success in it, and their advices. Now that may not be much of a thing what a “Kool” dude would have wanted to do. But I did.

I will talk about my grand parents today… well don’t have that much time to talk about all of them but let me talk about at least one of them here.

He is my mother’s father- Rabindra Nath Halder. He was the one who probably had the biggest influence on me. From my childhood I have heard people saying this is the guy who fits in perfectly in his grand father’s shoes. Well truly I wish I could.

He was a great personality. I have never managed to see him young, quite obviously as he is my grand dad. But I can imagine his youthful glory days. He was tall and stout. His eyes were intelligent and expressive. And he had a memory which I have never seen in anyone else.

When I look back into my life, I try to recollect my earliest encounters with his wit, intelligence and thoughts, I go back to a day of summer when I came to Kolkata to spend sometime at our always so beloved didabari (although the house was owned by Dadu, as we called him, it was named after our much loved dida, grandmother).

Dadu used to call me and start with 4 liners of a poem. Most of them I have never read nor have I heard anywhere. And in some cases lines of poems which I should be knowing but forgot because of my usual lack of concentration, and after reciting those lines, Dadu used to ask me tell me dear, who has written these famous lines?

I, as should be the case, lost the duel of intellect most of the time. I was no match to his memory. But those losses those questions and answers those battles of intellect made me determined next time I will not forget this. And I will prepare more. I wonder at the age of 70 how he remembered all those poems which he last read probably during his college days. And mind it, later on when I have seen his health breaking down, when I have seen his bent structure, when seeing him I have been afraid and thought about my own future, still he was spot on with his poems and those 4 liners.

Sometimes I wanted to run away, and play with my cousins. Sometimes I didn’t want to talk to Dadu about literature and I found some ways to avoid him. Just what the youth does…I guess. But now I feel guilty that by doing so, so many enlightening sessions I have lost. So many inspirations never reached me. Probably I would have been a different person had I been a bit more enthusiastic.

Dadu apart from all his literary abilities was a man of great abilities also. He was a civil servant, working as a magistrate for Govt of West Bengal. He was a proud Govt Official and wanted me to be one. He had always wanted me to go the same route and even higher. When I resisted saying that there is nothing but corruption in govt officials he never believed me. He talked about high ideals and people like Mahatma and Bidhan Chandra Roy.

When I started going to college which was quite near to Kolkata, I started to look at Dadu from a bit different angle. I wanted to analyse him. I wanted to know him as a distant person would have known him.

But I never really could actually. Whenever I looked at him, my respectful eyes and my love for him never let me look at him like a distant person. I was close to Dadu, much closer than his own son could ever get, and much closer than anyone else I got to know.

I used to come for every weekend to Dida bari. Our childhood fantasyland had already lost its charm immensely by that time. I will tell that story some other time. But those weekends was a sense of responsibility that grew inside me. Those two old people who despite their difficulties of survival (as they were living on their own at the age of 84 and 74 respectively my Dadu and dida) expected me to come home every weekend.

Every time my train got delayed, Dadu would stand on the nook of the road, expecting me on one of the numerous autos that passed by. I would take Dadu on those Saturdays to Bank when he needed to pick up his pension. A meagre amount for a magistrate though. And he was growing old, his hand used to shake quite a lot while signing.

One day the bank manager denied him his pension as his sign was not matching. What an irony. A life long devotee of honesty, a brilliant scholar, an honest govt official, a judicial magistrate is begging for a peanut amount (3000 rs)!!! The bank manager confidently asked me to prove that he is RN Halder who holds this pension account.

I fortunately by that time had come out of my small time naivety. I called my uncle and (Dadu’s son) who was a big manager of the same bank and only then the matter got resolved. And when it did, I told the manager, this is what happens to honest people in India. Why bother being one?

Dadu was in pain. He was humiliated, trembling. And I was in pain too.

My Dadu left me left all of us 3 months ago. On his bed while asleep. He faced much pain during his last few days. But his death was peaceful. I, who claimed to be the closest one to him, was sitting in UK in a restaurant having a glass of wine. I have never felt guiltier of my existence since then.

I am crying now. But surely he didn’t want me to. When I talked to him last over a phone and he was on his deathbed, Dadu just had one wish that time. He wanted to see me. Which I could not. I am crying now and I can hear his rhythmic voice chanting lines from Rabi Thakur and then sudden question “bolo to Ankan, er porer line ta ki?”

Isle of Skye

2007-09-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

Never really thought of going anywhere the last long weekend. As it came I was more willing to take long naps during those three days and forget everything about work. Then suddenly it struck me. The passion which drives me roam around all over the world my globe trotting inner self…

And on Friday night I found myself with my back pack on a bus ride to the northern valleys of Scottish highland. Can’t say the bus ride was fun. The buses in England are crappier than what you would find in a Chennai to Bangalore route. There you get those nice cozy Volvos with extreme luxurious seats with ample leg space. Here being a tall man as I am it becomes extremely difficult to travel on a bus. Last time while going to paris I sweared that I would never board a bus again in England for a long journey but I did it again just to take the same resolution again.

But this time I was prepared. With my IPOD in one of the numerous pockets of my six pocket cargo and another carrying my PSP, I was loaded for the sleepless night that followed. Watched national treasure while going and then listened to the wonderful melodies from Bong Connection which kept me going. The breaks were enjoyable too. Midnight cappuccinos with a puff of Marlborough amidst a light freshening shower is truly something!!

Morning I found myself standing in Perth. A northerly town of scottland, with strange English speaking people around me…

Let’s cut the crap a bit here. I am not here to write some fucking travelogue. I am here to share an experience which I think very few of you have had. That experience is called Skye.

On Sunday morning we started for Skye. Not knowing what to expect we were full of jokes and amusing expectations. But what we saw after a drive of three hours (which were colored with enumerous breaks alongside the roads) we saw a curved bridge going skywards and then landing on a small Island with broken coastline with the see and lochs invading into it every now and there. And that is Skye.

Over the next day and half what I saw was enough to give my camera shout for break. And finally I realised that how many ever photos I may take I will never be able to catch the beauty of the land which lies in front of me.

An island as calm as one can ever imagine that is skye my friend. Some of the land scapes are so full of nature and greenery that I felt many of these places may not have been touched by human beings. Especially the road that goes from Portree to Old man of Storr. It’s a single lane which goes over a vast valley and suddenly out of nowhere you will get to see the storr and its strange rock formations.

We got down there and started rock climbing. And once we were on top, the whole world became a separate place. Blue ocean surrounding the place and dark cullin mountains at the horizon. I thought snaps will be less to carry this whole piece of beauty home. And now I know words also are far lesser (or truly speaking I do not know such words in English which can) to describe this beauty.

My recommendations would be if you go to highlands go to Skye.

Indipendence Day

2007-08-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Independence day this year was different. Standing on British soil, we a bunch of 70 odd Indians got together in a meeting room of our office. We shared our views about freedom. We had a quiz about independence and India. And finally we stood together to sing our national anthem. I closed my eyes and started singing aloud to feel all around me different accents(Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi,Bengali and all) singing along in the same tune and in harmony.

I discovered a new Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka this independence day. I discovered India. I had goose bumps and I felt, suddenly, proud to be Indian.

Jai Hind.

Nice Ad Nike Ad

2007-08-15T15:20:00.001-07:00

Irritation

2007-08-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

I am a very irritating guy. Not that I irritate the hell out of others. But I myself am very much prone to irritation. The whole of today morning i was irritated with Gordon Brown, my manager, my lead myself and hundred other things. Then in the afternoon i got irritated with bill gates my fiance again myself and in the evening with Nokia, English weather and my room mate.

It was a highly irritating day also. Morning i woke up from a pain in my stomach. why? No i didn't eat a full chocolate cake the previous night. I had stomach pain because of my laptop...actually i fell asleep with my laptop on my belly. And somehow i slept for 8 hours like that. Funny?? Ya I know.

Then suddenly my alarm started ringing. i shouted i screamed i told politely to snooze. But my mobile is not voice activated so that i lying at one end of the room with a sore belly and a laptop on top of that will say something and it will oblige me. My mobile is, basically, deaf. So I had to get up.

moved the curtain aside and saw the beautiful English summer outside. lot of cumulus-nimbus clouds down pouring like hell. tremendous wind and a lovely muddy patch just in front of my house which I will have to cross while going to office. Bloody Bollocks!!

I said that, and that reminded me I have a client meeting right at 10 and if I don't start running I will be late. Then I cried as i pulled out my new £30 trouser from the washer and it has shrank by half to give a feel of three quarter. Cursing myself I got irritated again. Got more so when i noticed the small notice attached inside the trouser saying: dry clean only!!!!!

Then I spilled milk on the floor, spilled coffee on that and had to clean that mess. Started towards the tube station and halfway in that bloody rain remembered i haven't brought my Oyester. So had to get back. then a car made a nice muddy muddy mushy mushy pattern on my white shirt.

And then thanks to Mr Gordon Brown the train was late. I think trains run more on time in Calcutta than this bloody hell.

that was not the end of it. Although I ran and almost reached the venue on time my client turned up late. I think Brits are learning Indian standard time from Indians.
and so it went on...can't be asked to write anymore on irritation. Its kinda irritating.

Some senti talks....

2007-08-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

Slowly a feeling of indifference is growing in me. And I am not enjoying it. I know that i have a responsibility towards my family, towards my country and to myself by fulfilling the other wishes. But slowly and steadily something deep inside me tells me, "what the heck".

May be I am tired and may be I am stressed. Does it happen to you all? At one point of time you just want to leave all that you have and be free. Alone with yourself.

Long back I wanted to become an ideal son. I knew my parents want me to be the first boy in the class. I fought for it. I tried and studied hard. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I could not. But then a sense of who the hell cares came into me. I slowed down. I forgot my targets and i wanted to enjoy. Started reading all those wonderful novels which were there in my bookshelf during study hours. Started Sharat Chandra when i was in class V. and gradually my marks graduated downwards. It’s funny how I reacted to it though. In the year 1991, I got admitted in to Siliguri Boys High School. It was a huge school with a huge bunch of kids accumulating in the campus from all over the city. It was the best school for the middle class Bengali speaking people. Although everyone actually agreed that the study standards are really low in that school but the results of higher secondary and secondary are really good. Also the class I belonged to, having one’s kid reading in Siliguri Boys was a status symbol at that time. My parents wanted me to read there too. As my elder sis was already in Siliguri girls the onus was on me to “go get it Boy!!”

I tried hard as usual. And I was in.

So there I was with 300 other kids of the town there sitting in a filthy room with a tin roof, without any ceiling fan sweating like hell. I realized life in here is not gonna be easy. I prepared myself for the intellectual battle that awaited there. Then came the first exam. And the result also followed. I was eighth among the 300 and obviously it was a bad result. I scored 50% marks in Bengali which is below my standards. Now I never knew who actually set those standards for me and neither do I wanted to know but I knew that was awfully wrong to get so low marks. My father went to the school asked for a review or a scrutiny or anything for that matter. Finally it was revealed that I actually scored much more than those meager marks. And I finished second. I stopped crying(all these times I was crying because I could not make the mark I could not make my parents happy).

I can tell you that’s called Bengali middle class life story. That’s how all of us belonging to this typical class grow up. Half in fear of not making others wishes come true, half in fear of not finding others wishes same as our own wishes.

The followed a frenzied saga of high and lows. One exam I reached top the next one I was down to the ground. Probably the exam I would reach the top (not quite the top though I never became first in that school) the effort I would put in for that would do a negative effect on me and the next one would pull me down drastically. My mom found out this trend very soon. She became relaxed in a way. She used to tell me this time results are going to be bad just don’t run away from school I am not gonna hurt you when you come back. Things will be fine.

They are great people - my parents. They always wanted me to do great. I was a kind of apple of their eyes to sudden stardom. A fame that is not-so-easily touchable by ordinary people like they were. But they never pushed me. They never gave up on me although I could never really fulfil their hopes of becoming first boy of the class.

I suffered miserably in secondary. I was down with the result. I didn’t cry as I was a grown up by that time. But my mom understood what was going on in me. One summer afternoon when I was standing on our terrace and looking blindly at the sunny and abandoned streets of Siliguri she came and told me,”good that you didn’t do well this time may be the next time you would..remember the rule of alternate success!!” I started laughing and that was one moment in my life when I understood what role parents play in your life in your success.

I did fairly well in my HS. My name came into the front page of the local newspaper. And I called my mom with the news from a telephone booth that although this time also I could not fulfill their dream and could not become first in the school, still my result was fairly well and I am the 8th in the district.

She was crying. All she wanted is this bit. A fame, a glory for her son. When in her all “have not” life she can really forget all the poverty and all the mediocrity that scathe our lives. We have come one step further. We are no longer ordinary.

I really never did well after that. Never could be anyone worth a mention anywhere. And my mom since then has been deprived of that heavenly smile that I cherished for so many years that came after that.

Now that I wanted to write about something else and have come to something else I have suddenly realized that after all I am not so much indifferent to everything. Let my love forget me, let my life forget me. There are still two people on another side of the earth who still cares and waits in silence for the days of glory for me. They are my ma and baba.

Simple Fun

2007-07-26T17:22:00.001-07:00

Fun can be very simple. Like what we did today. There is a notice in men’s toilet in our office. That says “if any of toilets go faulty please contact so and so…” We wrote a comment below that- Toilet Assurance Solution Design(trouble to report).

Now that wouldn’t be fun for those who don’t know what trouble to report is and what solution design means and what is assurance. But it was for us who all the time are talking about assurance, solution design and troubles.

Another kind of fun was seeing a friend drunk the other day. He went drunk after a couple of glasses of wine and started shouting how much prestige Himesh has brought India with his latest flick (or should I say freak) “Aanpka Sunnroooooooooooor”!!

First few times I took the representativehood of all those blasphemous bastards and tried to point out how miserably we have failed to hide Himesh inside India and now he has reached Germany. And people all over the globe are laughing at our cinema. But he was not to be taken aback by all those bloody nonsense. And then my anger my nationalism and my rudeness gave way to humour. The next few hours were simply fabulous watching someone praise himesh as if he were his boyfriend. God save India.

There was a third funny incident which I didn’t find funny. Happened in transformer movie. Where an Indian call center guy with his funny accent tries to sell a package deal to a US Marine (those who do not know what a us marine is please read “Jarhead” by Anthony Swoff. Its basically a special species of animals who are terribly dangerous, expert in rape and murder and dreaded for their futileness all over the world.) and in that process gets the major almost killed. The public were roaring in laughter as if that is the funniest thing they have ever watched in their life.

So fun is of various types. You can have fun by pulling a girls skirt in the wide daylight and laugh your ass out all your life thinking about it and how you the goddamn lucky bastard didn’t get caught. But I would call you a rapist and demand for a prosecution. You can have fun at saying all bongs are horrendously meek and they don’t work they come to office late everyday without fail and all those normally people say about bongs, but I would call you a racist. You can say that all tamils are bloody idiots who do not know anything outside tamilnadu and my take on that would be such a poor take on joke.

Such was a funny movie which my room mate was watching today and laughing his ass out. “Partner” as the name says (could have been also named hitch-hindi). Well there is nothing funny in an over aged Govinda who it seems have left all the wonder with his dulheraja days and now have been left with a huge amount of buffoonery along with another muscular buffoon who calls himself Salman Khan (what a dhabba in the name of all Khans in Bollywood)!!

Fun my dear its all Fun.

Love ??

2007-07-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

love and life are two different things and often we make the mistake of mixing these two. More often than not we see hindi film heroes go the debdas way just because a girl has ditched him, or even worse did not look at him, or sometimes has done the mistake of sleeping with the other man rather than sleeping with him. All these sentiments while on screen gives it a superiority it doesn't deserve, while looked at in the light of practicality becomes very sick, irrational sentiments.

Love is Love and should be looked at it as love only. Its not the only part of one's life, and its not the ultimate thing in one's life. Now don't look at me like preity zinta of dil chahta hai and start preaching that one day i will understand the importance of love and blah blah blah. I do understand that. I know that loves gives a lot and it can potentially take a lot too. And my objection is there. Is love such a great thing that you can allow it to take a toll on your life? I guess not. To me love is the name of a relationship, the relation which can not be described in any other name. Its a bit more than friendship and there is no blood ties lying beneath to give it a name and so we call it LOVE...

Friends, believe me love is no big deal. Its a mistake that people do. start trusting the other with their life. And so when it goes wrong, it feels like life torn apart. But have you ever questioned why? May be I am sounding too much defensive, may be i am a bit too negative here, but do think of the possibility that when love goes wrong what happens to love? definitely it is not something which should have the liberty to ruin your life...forget life not even a day or not even a moment of your precious life. Love is a sweet thing to have, a thing to feel proud of that you are loved by someone, and to love someone with same intensity is even more proud thing to do. but i do feel its not life.

Mudiwali Budi( The Old Lady Who Used to Sell Mudi)

2007-07-14T03:55:00.001-07:00

Its a tale of love and pain. Love when it becomes unconditional it is heavenly feeling which my mother experienced. That was a long time back.
THat time I used to stay in Siliguri- A small town in West Bengal( on the chicken's neck of north eastern India).

We had a house in that town where I grew up. We did not have a very affluent life. Everything me and my sister asked were not to be fulfilled just by wishing for it. My parents made me understand the value of money and the hard work that goes behind to earn it. But parents words were not enough untill i saw poverty in my own eyes.
An old woman used to come to our house to sell Mudi (kind of puffed rice very popular in Bengal). She was old, too old, i would say, too carry that huge sackful of mudi on her head and walk around. But she seemed to me surprisingly stron inspite of her thin stature. She used to come everyday and sit in the varandah for a while in those hot summer afternoons. My mom used to sit with her for sometime. And the old lady would tell her lifestory. It seemed to me like an endless saga of pathetic incidents pain poverty and sobbings. Which although I was not from a affluent family seemed quite odd to me. I could never believe that life can be this tragic. Somehow it seemed unnatural and blown out of its proportion. She used to come everyday and sit there, probably in my mom she got a friend who would listen to her day to day life lessen her boredom loneliness for sometime atleast.
I used to mock my mom. I used to tease her calling her mudiwali's best friend. Mom would scold me to talk like that. But i never stopped. I thought this lady comes because my mom gives her things( like old clothes, sweaters and all...Once a piece of jewellery as well for her daughters marriage).
What i gathered from the other things that my mom later told me is her life was very painful. and she is very poor. Somehow her son is going to a school in the night to pass the secondery atleast. and her daughter will be married soon( which she was and soon she became the source of another unfortunate event).
This lady was all by herself. She lost her husband as soon as she got pregnant with her second child. She had to work even in her labor months on the field and its only hard work which made her earn a living for her two children. she was lonely and living in a place where few ppl cared about her. In her village none really was a friend to her to whom she could talk aand probably relieve herself from her agonising lonliness. So there was my mom.
As I said earlier I thought this was a give and take relation between these two individuals. I tried not to think as my mom's son, but some third person who doesn't know any of the subjects and analyse their condition. I while doing that I more and more became convinced that this was a petty poor rich relation, the poor is living totally on the consideration of Rich( The word RIch is to be taken relatively here).
But what I failed to notice is the other small gifts that is coming from the woman to my mom, and the smile in my mom's eyes. My mom knew she is poor and can not probably afford to give gifts, but everytime she came she used to come with some or other small things like a small ripe mango from the tree just beside her house in village. a half of a Rohu Fish which her son had caught while fishing in a pond nearby. These gifts were unique in nature. Mom always wanted to discourage her from bringing gifts as she feared this would put additiional pressure on this old lady. But she never stopped. Once she said, "eigula je ani tumar jonno ete amar bhalo lage. "Probably it gave her the chance to give off the burden of all those things that mom used to give her and stand side by side to mom. Probably these enabled her to think mom as a friend and not as a giver. Mom also told me the same thing when one day i asked her. I got a new angle of this relationship that day. I learnt friendship.
Then came the time when we were moving out of Siliguri to Kolkata( previously known as Calcutta). I was not there at home that time. Dad, Mom and didi were there. Few days before the day of departure, the lady came home. My mom had already told her that we were shifting to calcutta. that day it became a spectacle really when she started crying. She was sad. She was crying like a mother who is going to loose a child. She was crying and telling who will talk to me if you go away? who will care for me? when after many days mom told me about this i saw those blinks of tears in her eyes. and I knew there was love. there was friendship a kind I never experienced a kind which I would die for to feel and a kind only people who are very lucky like mom can feel. I am proud of you mom. I really am.

[The picture on the side is not the real woman just an illustration copied from Google Image search]

Samsing Travel- Written in Bengali

2007-07-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

tokhon ami Kolaghat college err second year er student...bari theke onek dure hostel e din katai..second year complete kore ekmaser chhuti te deshe firechchi...desh mane holo Siliguri...tomra kojon siliguri cheno jani na kintu siliguri amar kachhe khub e basto ar modern shohor ekta...ebong oboshyoi gola bajie ami tokko kori kolkatar loke der sathe je kon kon bapare siliguri bhalo...to sebar siliguri ese jothariti amra char murti hoechhi ek jot: ami , Piku, abhirup ar sanjib...sobai boys' school er bondhu...sebar hotat pratik e dilo prastab ta chal kothao ghure asi.. ami bollam,'ghurte jabi kire ekhon to almost barshakaal charidike khali brishti bonya'...kintu bakirao utsaho peye galo tai ami o raji hoe gelam...
kintu kothai jaoa jai?? jaiga thik kora ta khub mushkil er kaj hoe daralo...nana munir nana mot..keu bolchhe darjeeling..keu bolchhe karseong..keu bolchhe funtshiling...keu bolchhe kalimpong...keu abar soja gangtok...kintu kono tai amder monoputo hochhilo na. karon esob jaiga guloi amader bar pachek kore jaoa hoe gachhe..tokhon pratik e dilo idea ta..oi amader idear bhandar chhilo chirokal...bollo je chal samsing jai! Samsing?? Abhi bollo seta abar kothai re? keu konodin naam sone ni... but that was the whole idea...emon ekta jaigai jaoa jekhane keu konodin jai na...jekhankar shanto sundar jeeboner bhagidaar hoa...jekhane nodir jole pa chubie bose thakle thandai jokhon payer lom gulo khara hoe darai tokhon tar onbhuti ta ke nijer kore paoa. eisob onek kichhu asha nie ar adventure hisebe berie porechhilam amra charjon.... 2 b contd
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Bari te esei chechamechi jure dilam...ma bag dao...sweater dao...ei dao sei dao...packing korbo...ma kichhui jane na esob voyonkor plan sune akash theke porlo...porer din jalpaiguri te bonyar red alert roechhe...ghontai ghontai local cable channel balason, teesta, mahananda sobar water level nie report aschhe...Kintu amrao beparoa...jabo jokhon thik korechhi tokhon jaboi...ekta bag e kichhu habi jabi jinish dhukie nie berie porlam...Bari theke cycle nie pikur bari...sekhan theke soja bus stand... kintu bus stand e ese mathai porlo baaj. sob bus cancel hoe bose achche odlabari te bonya hoe gachche ar kono bus jachhe na oi route die. Kintu latest khobor paoa obdi chalsa te tokhono haalat thik thak sutorang chalsar bus gulo ghure ghure jachhe. thik kore fellam je ar tahole chintar kono dorkar nei...oi ghuronto pothei ber hoe pora jak. Bus er tkt kete fellam chalsar jonno. Uthe porlam ekta mandhata amoler ekta lorjhore bus e... bus er haalat dekhe abhi bollo bonyai e bus to bhasbe bole mone hoi...karon lohar ar kichhu baki nei puro tai kather toiri tai amader kono chinta nei. Ami o ekmot na hoe parlam na. bus sevok hoe madarihat die jete parchhe na tai bus er route puro ulto dike ghurie deoa hoechhe..bus jabe tista canal er pase je sodyo pathar fela rasta ta roechhe tar upor die. O rasta ta amader khub favourite. Ami ar piku bohudin gie o rastai cycle chalie giechhi onekdur obdi...jekhane boikunthapur forest range suru hochhe tar ektu age ekta swashan ghat achche chhotto ekta naam na jana nodir dhare. sekhane gele ek pash die boye jachche tistar upor sodyo kata ekta canal ar onno dike sei sundari nodi
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ei khane ese amader purono ekta experience bole di...ekdn oi rastai ami ar piku cholechhi. seidintai chhilo bodhhoi prothom dn oi pothe. Char dike gachh gachhalir majhkhane pathar fela rasta...tar opor cycle nie laje gobore dosha dui adventurer. rastar ekdike sei amader priyo nodi ta chhilo. onno dike amader canal ti. ekjon jol die bhora..,joler gorbe gorbini hoe nachte nachte cholechche ...arekjon jeno thik sorbohara...tir tir kore tar jibon nie boye choleche edike odike kono rokom e sob badhar pash katie. onek khon dhore cycle chalanor por hotat kheyal holo je ekpashe nodi ta to ar nei kothai jeno kono jadukar ese ek fush mantar die bata ke dieche haoa kore. amra dujonei khub chintai pore gelam. erokom rata rati nodi ke to haoa hoe jete dekhi ni kokhono...rastar pase canal ta thik e cholchhe kintu onno dikta chhilo onekta nichcu jekhan theke bechara nodita boye jachhilo...to kichhuta back track korar pore ter pelam je nodi ta hotat kore canal er niche ese haoa hoe gache. Amra dujonei chorom excited vugorbho basini ekti nodir abishkar korte cholechhi amra dui adhunik livingstone. cycle nie rastar paser soru paye chola poth beye niche neme ja dekhlam se prokritir aschorjo noi...manush er dara sristi kora ek aschcorjo. Tistar canal ta ekhane ese boye cholechhe ekta bridger upor die..ar tar nich die amader dukkhini nodi ti nijer moto apon bege boye cholechche. Sei nodir jole pa dubie amra dujone bose porlam ekta pathore. mathar upor die tokhon boye cholechhe borshar gorbini canal tar 20000 cusec er chondo nie...payer niche ektara bajie apon pothe cholechche amader dukkhini. Sei din je engineer oi bridge ta baniechhilo tar upor khub sroddha holo ei nodi tike bachie rakhar jonno.. tar ostitwo lunthan na korar jonno. technology ar nature er ei sohobaas e amra dujonei mohito hoe sei khane canal er niche bose joler chonde mashgul hoe gelam.
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fire asi amader journey te. To amader sei chena pothe amra raona holam ojanar sondhane. Elo rangapani. Bus e uthlo besh kichhu chhagal ar murgir jhuri. amar payer niche ek ekta murgi bhorti jhuri lagie die bollo je tumi baba ektu pa die chepe boso..noito bata ra palie jabe. ami o pa die ektu chepe chupe boslam. bus bhorti lok. ar tar modhyei ek badamwala badam bikri suru korechhe. motamuti bus na bole ekta hut bolai bhalo...jai hok kharap lagchhilo na bapar ta. erpor amra chole elam sei canal ar nodir modhye die boe chola pahture rastai. tar opor die amader bus dulte dulte lafate lafate egie chollo. jani na totokhone amar payer chape murgi gulo bikot chechcamechhi suru korechchilo koikata nischoi potol o tulechhilo...kintu kichhui korar nei. obosheshe sei rasta teo chena ongsher pala sesh hoe elo ek notun rajyo. ekpashe ghono bon boikunthapur range. tar theke duek bar chital horin era uki mere dekhe galo kara aj tader shanti nosto korte esechhe. tar por onekkhon bon er majhe die cholar por hotat kore charpas forsa hoe galo. hotat kore onekta akash ese galo amader mathar upor...obak hoe samne takie dekhlam bishal book nie samne sue roechhe rongini teesta. tar neel jol prochondo probaho ar ohonkar er dala sajie. Teesta amar mote duniar sobtheke sundari nodi. er rup er tulona paoa bhar. gorom e ei teesta jokhon tir tir kore shanto hoe boye chole tokhon taake kono gramyo grihobodhu bole bhabte ektu o osubidhe hoi na. jeno sondhyer snan sere pradeep jalate esechhe tulshi tolai. ar jokhon borshai sei teesta hotat kore proloyonkori rup nie cholat cholat sobde kapie dai ...atonke fire takie dekhi sei mohimamoyee rup seeno sakkhat dakate kali.er haat ar tandav theke jeno rokkhe nei karo.
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teesta paar hoe amra probesh korlam jalpaigur jelai. gramer majhkhan die edie cholechhi odlabarir dike jani sameni bonya hoechhe kothao. Prochur lok odik theke chole aschhe edik pane. amra tao egie cholechhi. odlabariri samne ese amader bus ekta onno chhotto rastai dhuke porlo. erpor theke kichhui temon chintam na.ar ektu ghum ghum pachhilo...klanto chokhe chokh lege elo. hotat kore tarapor jokhon chokh khullam bus jure loker chechamechi sune bujhlam chalsai pouchhe gechhi. chalsa theke dhorlam ekta jeep. sei jeep e motamuti 15-20 jon moto lok hoe driver ekgaal hese jeep chhere dilo. chalsa thekek rasta ta hotat pahari hoe uthlo. pahar er ga beye amra charjone uthte laglam samsing pahar er upor. dudike cha bagan er sobuj er majhkhane die amra egie gelam sekhane jekhane ar age jaoar jaiga nei. rastar sesh prante ese ekta chhotto pahari gram...Samsing.

Code Red

2006-07-20T05:12:00.000-07:00

(Thursday, July 20, 2006)

The life of ease suddenly takes a turn and ends up in a complete mess...and most of the time it does so its your stupidity that plays a major role behind that...Now that is not something Confuscious wrote...and neither is that something Socrates told his disciples after much contemplation....It was a hard fact that I learnt in the last few months that I have been in UK.Now UK has nothing to do about it. Nor does BT as the underlying link in the title might suggest. Its only that in UK it happened and it happened with BT. I am working on an assignment with BT now a days. Not that I am doing something high fundoo and my stupidity ended in putting BT in a big mess...No darling I am not that big a fish who can do that... I did a stupid mistake of taking up a project and which ended putting my own life into shit. Spring as we love to(or hate to ) call it is the name of the project which is probably the most talking point in BT now a days. And as we are running late on some part the ppl in authority got afraid and they whipped a code red.Now many ppl will ask what is a code red...especially my fellow Bongs will definitely feel that I am talking about the great Red Revolution that BT might have put into to get everything moving...as affter all only communism moves things...Well that is not the case at all...on the contrary they gave a chance to complete autocracy.more to come...

Da Vinci Code

2006-07-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

(Thursday, July 20, 2006)

This movie disappointed me. Many will be startled, many will look back at me stating who da hell you are to say about a movie which is loved by millions and hated by billions. and at the end watched by 1001 million!!Well definitely a minnow like me should not comment in public about a figure like Ron Howard. Much much larger looms his shadow than life over anyones mind whoever is watching. We always remember that we are infact watching a RH movie...which if you are not a blasphemious bastard like I am will have to like........But still with all those giants shadows fallingover me and covering me with darkness......still with feeble voice I shout that Oh Jesus ...... if this movie was supposed to be like this then they should've written outside the movie hall that viewers please be warned that if you have read the book and have some original thoughts in place how this movie will destroy those and that's where you will be disappointed first time.....Let's come down to the point why I was disappointed with the movie.First of all the quality of editing….I hated it when it had to adjust the storyline to make it a 2 hour movie rather than a 4 hour one. And so radical was it that it almost ignored some sane points what the book doesn’t overlook but the movie does. Like in the airport when they board the flight …None stops them actually. That’s stupid.Also Tom Hanks doesn’t look convincing in a symbol specialist’s role. There is nothing apart from the first few minutes where he can establish that he was a symbol spec.Next is the history behind the brawl of the girl and her grandfather. Why they were not so much in touch none tells us properly. That’s a shame to omit that part as that is the part which tells us about pagan religions.

Bookfair in Kolkata

2006-07-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

(Saturday, July 01, 2006)

Kolkata Book fair could not be put into words more aptly........read on ...Quoted a post in greatbong.net

I am neither religious nor a big bibliophile. And yet the things I miss most about Calcutta and my old life , without doubt, are Durga Puja and the Calcutta Book Fair.That is because Durga Puja is not only about religion. Just like the Book Fair isn’t merely about books.People. Yes both of them are also about people. And the essence of Calcutta—my favoritest city in the whole wide world.When I close my eyes and think of Book Fair, the sound of shehenai on the public-address system comes warbling back to me—through the many years that have passed. I am flooded by memories—the puddles of water on the Maidan, the discarded bamboo poles lying about, the dust everywhere stirred up by the peripatetic peregrinations of millions, the tattered newspapers flying around in a midafternoon vortex of air, the smell of freshly-printed books, the sense of peaceful hustle-and-bustle all around. All was well with the world.Make no mistake. The Book Fair is about books. Only not just about it.When I was a kid, eons ago Book Fair was The event. It was where I got to spend my birthday money and set sail for imaginary worlds where I would encounter the antics of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Professor Shanku, the tall tales of Narayan Gangopadhyay’s Teni-da, the spooky charm of “World’s Best Ghost Stories”, the adventures of Tintin and the surreal comedy of Bantul the Great and the naughty Nonte-Phonte.My memories of these early days constitute strikingly fresh images of a small boy going wide-eyed into the huge pavilions holding his father’s hand tight lest he get lost in the crowd. And his father reaching up the shelves and then looking down and saying—this book is good for you. Let’s buy this.I also remember the feeling of irritation and impotent desperation as this aforementioned father took his sweet time going through heavy books in the boring Oxford book stall while the horrid book agent (who used to sell books at Indian Institute of Management) kept on showing him one new arrival after another. Aghast at the time being wasted on this futile activity, the small boy, with a strand of freshly-eaten pink cotton candy hanging from his nose, kept on pulling at his other hand —reminding him that the Rupa bookstall was filling up. And the “Limca Book of Records” was flying off the shelves like hot cakes.Samuelson could wait. The man with the longest moustache could not.As I grew older, things became different. Baba would come on his day and me on mine. Of course there was one family day—Baba , Ma and me. But bookhunting became more personal.I never liked coming with friends to the Book Fair—I preferred solitude . It was easier to get lost in the crowd while being alone. Also my friends were too much into question papers, GRE big book, competitive exams and VC++ Unleashed —which to me was too much work. And quite against the spirit of the whole thing. I had nothing against GRE test papers and did a fair amount of mugging too—-but thinking of the corporeal world at the Book fair was to me like entering a temple with shoes on. In short, anathema.Just as much a cosmic disturbance as forsaking the pakoras and coffee at the Coffee House stall for the chicken kababs and roast legs from the Arambagh Hatcheries cubicle.Okay I confess. I ate all of them. Because one should never book-hunt on an empty stomach. Or discriminate between the Coffee House laddoo, the Rollick ice cream, the Fish Fry from Benfish and the Paan from Mantu’s.One of the principal attractions of the fair was being able to physically leaf through the books —an experience we seem to be gradually losing in the world of Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And the books that were ideal for leafing through were those lavishly photographed expensive picture books which you would never see anywhere else—-the World War encyclopedias, the National Geographic’s anniversary collection, a collection of greatest pictures from Life magazine.And also those pictorial Kamasutra and erotic massage books —-furtively going over a page or two before a disapproving stare from an older person would lead me to quickly reach for the Complete Gardening and Home Improvement book reclining next to it.Every year of course there was one hyped-up, must-do thing at the Book Fair. Once Jacques Derrida was the special guest[sorry my mistake: not Saki as I initially typed] and a lot of people turned up just because he was “heavy”(or because of the reassuring “da” at the end ). Another time, Shobha De came to promote one of her steamy KLPD novels and a minor riot broke out to see her. Another year the hottest selling book and topic of conversation was , hold your breath, Arindam Chaudhuri’s Chicken and Egg book. I remember asking the popcorn guy to put more butter on my popcorn while he discussed with his mate this great new “management” guy (yes he used the word) whom he had seen in a book-signing session nearby and how he looked like a mahamanush (great man). And was a Bengali too.The magic of books. And the ponytail to provide an aura of intellectualism.However I was not the one to be taken in by the hype. Okay maybe a few times. But in general, I never found the big stores particularly appealing–most of them were just like the other. And I could go to these places any time of the year.However what was unique to me at the Bookfair was the little stalls. They were the lifeblood of the event–totally bereft of commercialization, selling books noone could possibly sell in an economically viable way. Some were motivated by a belief—the Ananda Margis, some by a cause—punish the Rajakars (the Pakistani collaborators during Bangladesh’s war of independence), and some by a dream that had passed them by—old emaciated men peddling thick tomes of Marx and Engels.Then there were the amusing ones—stalls for selling Yoga books by the Ironman of Bengal where one could get weighed for free if one bought one of their books.And finally the foot-soldiers of the fair–those peddling “Little Magazines”—printed versions of what we would nowadays call blogs—poems, small bits of prose, humor, satire, rants–all sold at bargain basement prices. And what’s more the authors were themselves selling it, engaging you in a conversation that sometimes intentionally, as part of their salesmanship was escalated to a heated debate and then asking..no compelling.. you to buy the “Little Magazine” for prices that ranged from Rs 2 upwards.Sometimes the magic of the bookfair lay in sitting down on the ground and just observing people. Because those who love books are as fascinating as the books themselves. The young intellectual–bearded, jhola in hand and a faded kurta. The struggling artist—peddling his pictures and small sculptures. The bald-headed, thick-glassed bibliophile wending his way to Subarnarekha–the stall that sold rare, out-of-print books. The family out for an evening of fun with the packet of shrimp bought from the Benfish stall being the principal purchase. A group of college kids talking and laughing. A couple holding hands, lost in themselves.And me sitting, a bag of fast-disappearing pop corn in my hand leafing through the book of life. Free of cost.In conclusion, my abiding memory of Book Fair would be this man we met a long time ago. My father and I were sitting on the grass. Poverty writ large on his face and his faded, threadbare shirt, he came and started reciting a poem. And then asked my father whether he would like to buy a poem for 10 paisa. (His punch line was ” a poem for 10 paisa”).He had in his hand several printed copies of a small leaflet—each of which had 10 poems written by him. And he was selling it for Re 1 a pamphlet.My father asked him what he did for a living. Smiling shyly, the man said that he is a poet. He lives far away in a remote village in North Bengal and all through the year he goes to different fairs all over West Bengal—mostly village melas where he recites and sells his leaflets. He also proudly pointed out that every few months he comes up with new material.When my father asked him where he stayed during the Book Fair, he smiled enigmatically and the poetic, dignified silence left no doubt as to the fact that he possibly slept on a footpath.My father bought one of his leaflets and after he had gone read a few of them. They were of middling quality—a jewel in the dust this man surely was not.But therein lay the beauty of it. The beauty of conviction. The beauty of dreams. The fact that this man believes that one day he will make it as a poet . And what’s inspiring is that despite the odds he faces every day, he still manages to radiate enthusiasm for his craft—a luminant joi de vivre that comes from believing in what he does.That sales pitch of “a poem for 10 paisa” accompanied with the boisterous recitation—he must be doing this routine about hundreds of times every day, mostly to people who are irritated by his presence (I saw another group on the grass who basically told him to f*** off) and just want this nuisance to leave them alone. Looking at him going about his work, I realized that not once during his numerous sales pitches does his enthusiasm or self-belief waver, nor does he ever sell his poverty and ask for sympathy—not when insulted, not when rebuffed and not when sleeping on the footpath on a cold Calcutta night.That , my friend, is the mark of a true artist.And the Book Fair is where you find him.

MI3

2006-05-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

(Monday, May 08, 2006)

MI 3….. deliveres

MI-3 deliveres although this is definitely not the one movie you can put in the same row as THE ROCK. But its sleek, and its tense. That’s where the movie wins actually. Lets go into the tits and bits of the movie…

Story:-
Ethan Hunt our protagonist is an agent for IMF…one of those many top secret agencies of America. He is getting married this summer. His love is beautiful Julia. But he has this last mission to complete … and that is Mission Impossible the third of the trilogy. But this time things are more complicated and there are rats inside his own agency….and his opponent is a deadly and sadistic villain…Owen Davie.

PLUSS:-
The movie as I said is sleek. Like the two other MIs. And it has got good strong acting support from Tom Cruise. Also not to forget the famous Morpheus: Laurence Fishburne in a cameo. more to come on this.......

Life now..........

2006-03-24T05:05:00.000-08:00

(Friday, March 24, 2006)

Once more I am writing after such a loooong gap...thought I would never have the pain that I had started to love. Thought never ever I will feel the loneliness which kept my pen going on and on. Thought never again I would write about hearts content as I have already got someone who will understand what lies beneath before I have to actually say it.Things change but one thing remains constant my love towards pain. That’s why my destiny will pull me towards something which will b painful and odd.I am missing you too much. Every night and every day its like a sitting on a pin cushion. I don’t know whether the simili is correct or not. But that’s what the case is here. And when you feel that the same fire is not present on the other side over the seas, the pain increases like never before. I do not know when I reach the UK things might become brighter. But I hardly fore see that. Don’t know whether I am right or wrong in this. But that’s what I am feeling right now.I wonder why I am not the slightest excited about going to UK. For the first time in my life I am moving out abroad and I can’t feel anything in my bloodstreams making me excited. Probably I need some kick to get up from this awful low week. Next week my parents are coming so expecting a better time ahead. Who knows………..All the loneliness is my companion right now. All the worries of losing her. Don’t know why………But my heart says I am losing her. Oh god please help me……I talk to her twice a day. I keep on sending her mails. Still nothing happens the gloomy loneliness persists. The life becomes dark to darker.,…….

Hell Of a Time!!

2005-10-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

(Monday, October 24, 2005)

Don't know what am I doing right now! The studies seems to be f***** up. Life is full of trouble. My look out for some Management Institute is not going to end this time also and its quite certain. I am not giving it up. But something in my mind tells me unless I do something wonderful in this last few days for English I am gone. All my friends are better off than me. All... I am the only one screwing with my own future. I wanted to study... At the same time I am doing all sort of things which will not allow me to study also. Dunno what to do about those. I hope I had someone who could solve my problem. Someone whom I could make all these understand and work out a solution for me.But I am afraid those angels of fire are long bygone from my life. I am living an alien life here. Doing nothing to add value to my resume and doing nothing to make my big dreams true. God has only given me the power to imagine and dream and he didn't teach me how to make them true.I am very much frustrated right now. So I am righting this in my open blog. I know people will read this and probably laugh about it. A man must not get depressed. A man must not cry even with dry eyes.But what pain it is only a man understands when he stands on this vast desert alone, woonded but sees no place to recline or to die peacefully.I am not crying as I forgot how to. I am not dying as I don't know how to. I am only trying and trying.... as life taught me only one thing in this 23 years of my life: "Never Say Die"

Airframe

2005-09-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on September 14, 2005)

This is an outstanding book! That's all is coming to my mind...Michael Crichton as usual has delivered it again.But then I would say its not for the non-tech or not-even-interested-to-tech guys... you have to be a techie to understand the flow of the book. There are few aspects which makes this book great.1. The detailed technicalities of an aircraft. How the hell mikey got those I don know...but that is really an applausible effort.2.The way he picutrises the engineers...they are all kids. They still play with the toys...ofcourse big complicated toys. And anyone who is grown up is not allowed in their world. They won't simply allow it. Too often when i was a young blood I used to dream to be like one......3. The story is also a gripping one. A fatal aircraft accident. Crushing pressure from the media. Union against the management. One Incident Review Team and mounting pressure on them. How a single women solves all and brings the airframe company to solid ground that's the story. Its fabulously written. and the suspense will also chase you to finish off the book at a single run.With all its grand qualities still however the book fails to climb the steps from a normal thriller to a literature. Because the science and technicalities just take up the importance from the humane side of the stories. Apart from the main protagonist Casey no other character is displayed in the full view mirror and so the villains also remains in the shed with their motives vaguely known to the reader.But overall I would say this book I liked as this is not intended to be a world classic but its got its own genre in which it should be called a masterpiece like Timeline and Jurassic Park.

Change The Change...and My View on Decision Taking

2005-09-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on September 01, 2005)

Within a week the whole thing changed………..the whole thing means life project and everything…..got a new responsibility which I don’t know how well I be fulfilling…But no doubt I will try…..so became the new lead of my team…with all those friends with whom I have worked the whole of last year now I will have to lead them..tough job…..not technically but a complete new job in which I am not experienced at all….but you have to start sometimes……..

A lot more of the changes are there…..almost all seniors are leaving….and some like us are getting the chance of being seniors and handle the responsibility….handling the testing team is one of the toughest jobs I guess…because unlike the other teams here we do some work……. Not to demean the other teams though…but really it’s a hectic work and probably the most hectic as it can be in our project…

Its fine to see people happy…and its not so fine to see them not. Some have got their desired changes and happy to the full……and some haven’t but still with full morale trying hard to make themselves a fuller so that in the next run they can have the change for the better….and some like me are not so sure whether the change was for better or for worse….Life is like this…you can never guess what it has got in store for you…even that day in the morning I didn’t know that I will become the lead and I will have to take a decision of choosing the role or demise…and I did take the decision.

Taking a decision is one work which I have found always hard. Probably because all the time I didn’t work out on the decision practically…sometimes I have taken a decision just like that and did not take the pain to think about the situation that I’m in ……and what exactly the situation is going to be when I take this decision and what it will be when I do the other thing. This causal analysis makes things really easy. You should always be in a position to take interest what is happening all around you and decide depending on that. Its never a gambling game. And gambling never makes a man rich. Only thinking hard and thinking practically is going to help you out when you are in a situation where you can not make out what is going to be your next step.

I have been taken decisions like this before. My parents even in my early life also left the decision taking part on my shoulders only. Which college to study in and which subject to study all these decisions were taken by me only and I can tell you not all of them turned out to be a wise decision neither were they any well thought decisions. But whatever decision you take its only upto you to make them seem right by your actions. Like I did not get a govt college while passing my 12th standard. So I had to take a decision between waiting for another year or joining some private institution then and there. I chose the latter and I did make it seem like this was the right decision as even if I joined a reputed college after passing out I would be doing this same scrap work in some or the other IT company with the same efficiency with only one plus thing that is a year plus to my age.

So I made it there. This can be done in other fields also. I seriously feel that its in your hands how bad or good the situation turns out to be!!

Puja by Veer Sanghvi

2005-08-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on August 25, 2005)
This was a forwarded mail from Baltu....an article by Veer Sanghvi..watch out what he writes about Kolkata...the city I love too much...

Vir Sanghvi is the editor of The Hindustan Times.Subject: Pujo By Vir SanghviWhat 'Pujo' means to a BengaliMost modern Indian cities strive to rise above ethnicity.

Tell anybody who lives in Bombay that he lives in a Maharashtrian city and (unless of course, you are speaking to Bal Thackeray) he will take immediate offence. We are cosmopolitan, he will say indigenously. Tell a Delhiwalla that his is a Punjabi city (which, in many ways, it is) and he will respond with much self-righteous nonsense about being the nation's capital, about the international composition of the city's elite etc. And tell a Bangalorean that he lives in a Kannadiga city and you'll get lots of techno-gaff about the internet revolution and about how Bangalore is even more cosmopolitan than Bombay.But, the only way to understand what Calcutta is about is recognize that the city is essentially Bengali. What's more, no Bengali minds you saying that. Rather, he is proud of the fact. Calcutta's strengths and weaknesses mirror those of the Bengali character. It has the drawbacks: the sudden passions, the cheerful chaos, the utter contempt for mere commerce, the fiery response to the smallest provocation. And it has the strengths (actually, I think of the drawbacks as strengths in their own way). Calcutta embodies the Bengali love of culture; the triumph of intellectualism over greed; the complete transparency of all emotions, the disdain with which hypocrisy and insincerity are treated; the warmth of genuine humanity; and the supremacy of emotion over all other aspects of human existence.That's why Calcutta is not for everyone. You want your cities clean and green; stick to Delhi. You want your cities, rich and impersonal; go to Bombay. You want them high-tech and full of draught beer; Bangalore's your place. But if you want a city with a soul: come to Calcutta.When I look back on the years I've spent in Calcutta - and I come back so many times each year that I often feel I've never been away - I don't remember the things that people remember about cities. When I think of London, I think of the vast open spaces of Hyde Park. When I think of New York, I think of the frenzy of Times Square. When I think of Tokyo, I think of the bright lights of Shinjiku. And when I think of Paris, I think of the Champs Elysee. But when I think of Calcutta, I never think of any one place. I don't focus on the greenery of the maidan, the beauty of the Victoria Memorial, the bustle of Burra Bazar or the splendour of the new Howrah 'Bridge'. I think of people. Because, finally, a city is more than bricks and mortars, street lights and tarred roads. A city is the sum of its people. And who can ever forget - or replicate - the people of Calcutta?When I first came to live here, I was told that the city would grow on me. What nobody told me was that the city would change my life. It was in Calcutta that I learntabout true warmth; about simple human decency; about love and friendship; about emotions and caring; about truth and honesty. I learnt other things too. Coming from Bombay as I did, it was a revelation to live in a city where people judged each other on the things that really mattered; where they recognized that being rich did not make you a better person - in fact, it might have the opposite effect. I learnt also that if life is about more than just money, it is about the things that other cities ignore; about culture, about ideas, about art, and about passion. In Bombay, a man with a relatively low income will salt some of it away for the day when he gets a stock market tip. In Calcutta, a man with exactly the same income will not know the difference between a debenture and a dividend. But he will spend his money on the things that matter. Each morning, he will read at least two newspapers and develop sharply etched views on the state of the world. Each evening, there will be fresh (ideally, fresh-water or river) fish on his table. His children will be encouraged to learn to dance or sing. His family will appreciate the power of poetry. And for him, religion and culture will be in inextricably bound together.Ah religion! Tell outsiders about the importance of Puja in Calcutta and they'll scoff. Don't be silly, they'll say. Puja is a religious festival. And Bengal has voted for the CPM since 1977. How can godless Bengal be so hung up on a religions festival? I never know how to explain them that to a Bengali, religion consists of much more than shouting Jai Shri Ram or pulling down somebody's mosque. It has little to do with meaningless ritual or sinister political activity.The essence of Puja is that all the passions of Bengal converge: emotion, culture, the love of life, the warmth of being together, the joy of celebration, the pride in artistic ex-pression and yes, the cult of the goddess.It may be about religion. But is about much more than just worship. In which other part of India would small, not particularly well-off localities, vie with each other to produce the best pandals? Where else could puja pandals go beyond religion to draw inspiration from everything else? In the years I lived in Calcutta, the pandals featured Amitabh Bachchan, Princes Diana and even Saddam Hussain! Where else would children cry with the sheer emotional power of Dashimi, upset that the Goddess had left their homes? Where else would the whole city gooseflesh when the dhakis first begin to beat their drums? Which other Indian festival - in any part of the country - is so much about food, about going from one roadside stall to another, following your nose as it trails the smells of cooking?To understand Puja, you must understand Calcutta. And to understand Calcutta, you must understand the Bengali. It's not easy.Certainly, you can't do it till you come and live here, till you let Calcutta suffuse your being, invade your bloodstream and steal your soul. But once you have, you'll love Calcutta forever. Wherever you go, a bit of Calcutta will go with you. I know, because it's happened to me. And every Puja, I am overcome by the magic of Bengal. It's a feeling that'll never go away.

Busy Days Ahead

2005-08-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on August 25, 2005)
The whole of this week and the last week was a busy schedule...not like bishal though...but it was hectic for a guy like me!! Dunno how am I doing this job over and over again again everyday...it must be pathetic isn't it ...my brain asks my soul.......soul gets irritated.."why don't you yourself feel how it feels to do a job like this?"...my brain laughs.."how will I? I go to sleep when you do all these scrap..after all I am not at all needed here!"Seriously...being in IT and doing some real fundoo job which I always dreamt of is a lot like going thru a desert and whenever u feel thirsty u get to find a lake sort ot thing...Never mind I keep on blabbering about this thing...and now it has become my habit ...so forget it...today I have to finish some work also but nothing seems to work out ...there are so many strange bugs appearing...Dunno what went wrong!! cya for now ...may b if I finish my job I will write a li'll more!

Presentation

2005-08-17T04:45:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on August 17, 2005)

tomorrow is my presentation...dunno what to say...this creepy process thing gets on my nervs. I do not know what the hell is CMM or PCMM or IPMS...all these technical jargons are nothing but disconnected alphabets who are roaming around my head like orphans...Oh great Lord bless me with mercy and make me clear this.Yesterday was my 2nd MockCAT in which I fared damn badly. I did some silly mistakes which will even make a 4 yr old kid cover his face in shame. But that's what I am once on top of 7th heaven and the next moment on the hard realities of ground....

My Hometown- The Waterbridge

2005-08-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on August 17, 2005)
I still keep on remembering my hometown feel nostalgic…My hometown is Siliguri just like my roomy Bishal and like every other siligurian I also feel very much patriotic while talking about that serene Himalayan town…(sounds nice huh?? Go there once to understand the serenity which lives and dies with the horn of Rickshaw…This place holds the world record of rickshaw pullers density)..However everyone is nostalgic about their place!! I am a little bit more so. I found out some real good places there. Places to hang out with friends and places where you can light your first cigarette without having the tension of getting seen! The water bridge was such a place…A nice and huge canal under which a tiny river vanishes…Now this point you shall ask how?Well actually amidst the ranges of Baikunthapur Forest there appears this tiny river Baikuntha which goes on its normal whizzy whazzy way. But man had to dig that canal to reform irrigation and all. But somehow here they showed the tiny river a little mercy unlike many other cases. They built a bridge on which the canal passes bypassing the river. And when you go beneath the canal…stand in the knee dip water…take a cigarette in your hand …and feel that 40000 cusec of water is flowing over your head with thundering noise and tremendous energy …………..You truly feel like GOD!

Metamorphosys de Confirmacio

2005-08-17T04:37:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted in http://www.eforeconomics.blogspot.com/ on August 17, 2005)
Getting confirmed had a big impact on my room-mates and me..and to say specifically on Jha...his all day sleeps ...long night hauls into the adventures of Television (Put an 'F' before the word television)...and tiny moments at office seemed to come to an end. Time was changing fast...& so was Jha...He startled us first when one day he told San to call him up at dawn(well for us that is 7)...he startled us even more when he woke up himself at the scheduled time which was a first in his lifetime I guess ...(and Naidu who is a college mate of his, strongly confirms this)..then started a saga of long hours at office ...after returning, taking a usual sigh of relief( which me bishal or naidu normally have ...or san takes after a dinner!! )...If somebody asks me whether I have seen a living Paradigm Shift...I would say yes I have...!! CAT ran away by the backdoor...and the dreams of getting a good rating floated into his mind....which drove him towards working...well even if not working staying at office!!Then oneday me and Jha went to a bar...we took a large peg of vodka and toasted "To the well being of CAT which had flown away from our hands" and bid goodbye to CAT....

My Room Tata and sons

2005-08-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

((Originally posted at August12 2005 in my other blog Eforeconomics which due to my bloody forgetfullness i have to abandone now... So I am copying all the notes from there to here))
Hi Guys...Paul here to welcome you on a journey from COAST TO COAST....Life is always kool and confused as well...That's why when God created me he created a person who on the course of becoming a poet lost his way and found salvation through the electrons and holes of transistors to an elien world of computers and softwares...And found poetry in the codes of SQL ultimately....So here am I your Captain for the journey through the pages of my life through the incidents and the accidents to take you on a road...that goes cross country from coast to coast........
posted by Paul at 6:57 AM 0 comments
Friday, August 12, 2005

My Room--TATA and sons!!
We roomies.. all are sons of TATA....now don get suspicious about our surnames...I meant to say that for us TATA is 'my baap'! TATA feeds us and milks us also. I wanted to let you guys know who I live with...together in our appartment...(but do not think - we live together)!The First Person is: Bishal Sharma...well this is an alphabetical list that's why Bishal getting advanage of projecting himself at first..no politics guys! This fellow is from my hometown that is Siliguri. What can we say about him?? One of the most prized employees of TCS. Works day in and day out to let "Poor Engine making company Cummins" make a little money!!Next:Santanu Ghosh... The CAT Freak! our dear san ..when he is not eating he must be preparing for CAT...and if he is preparing for CAT he must be snoring...!!!:-)Next:Satish Kumar Jha...The real business minded fellow in our group..(How can we forget the concept of E-Pan!) Shares and Mutual Funds run in his mind always...and he is the inventor of the plans of life(Plan A,Plan B,Plan C)...Started with Plan A...now sleeps peacefully upto 10a.m with a simple variant of plan C in mind(Plan CC).Next:Satish Naidu...The real movie freak...and the confused kid in the block..He can watch 3 chimapnjees jumping around for 3 hours and find out great spiritual meaning out of it...Last is me: Well I should not be telling about me..as every insane person thinks he himself is sane and I already proved my insanity by staying happily with so many insane people...!